North End Market Tour

Great tour and enthusiastic instructor. An inside look at the North End, Italian specialty foods and products. Very informative and very engaging. I highly recommend this tour.

Great tour to some wonderful shops, fantastic and knowledgeable tour guide (Beth), and tasty samples along the way. Lots of fun!!

Although I live only 30 miles from Boston and have lived here my entire life, I learned some very interesting facts on this tour. Along with that, it was also great fun! Our tour guide, a gentlemen who I apologetically cannot remember his name, was excellent. The shops we visited were great, and sampling the different foods offerings was wonderful. A great way to spend an afternoon if you're visiting in Boston or are a local!

Beth was a wonderful, informative tour guide who loves cooking, food and people. It was accurately described as a tasting tour and a great thing to do as a newcomer to the Boston area - not necessarily for tourists although they may find it interesting as well. Definitely helpful if you love to cook and experiment with food - especially if you have never been to Europe. If you are a frequent world traveler or a true gourmet chef, you might not find it so informative, but for anyone who would like a taste of life in Italy and looking to expand their cooking skills, it was a great way to spend t he day.

Learned alot!

What a great tour to intro my guy to Boston, my favorite city. We are "foodies" and learned so much at the different stops! Prompt, easy to get to and such a delightful guide, Richard. A definite recommend and thank you. p.s. more time to shop would have ben helpful as the tour ended when shops closed Gina Maria and Jim from Granada Hills, Ca 5/08

Six friends and family recently joined me on a tour of the North End. Our tour group was a total of 12 people. Our guide, Jim, was very personable and knowledgable about the history and evolution of the North End neighborhood,. His background information really set the stage for our exploration of the area. I found the tour enjoyable and the introduction to the specialty shops quite fun. I am a a foodie so I found that a lot of the product-specific information that was presented on the tour (the difference between extra virgin olive oil and other olive oil types, the difference between true balsamic vinegar and what one sees in the supermarkets, etc.) was familiar- so I was suprised when so many other people on the tour had never heard this information. I'm sure that the tour was more eye opening for them. It would be great if there was another similar tour for foodie types like me where we would have the opportunity to really explore the unusual offerings of the neighborhood knowing that we already had a fairly substantial foundational understanding of the basics of italian regional cuisine. I also enjoyed some of the nibbles that we were offered on the tour, but would like to offer the comment that a product tasting is much more valuable when you have the opportunity to taste an array of similar products side-by-side. Again, for those on the tour who had never tasked extra virgin olive oil, tasting one variety was likely a highly memorable experience. However, since we spent significant time discussing the variable characteristics of, for example, the oils pressed from different types of olives at different states, it would have been more interesting to be able to taste several oils in order to really taste and consider their characteristic differences. The same goes for cheese, and for the wide array of apertifs and digestifs described but not sampled along the way. My last comment is that I found the liquor shop that we visited to be a treasure trove, but I would be disinclined to shop there in the future due to the way that the members of our tour were treated by the shop clerks- who did not seem pleased to have a dozen individuals oriented to their shop by a professional chef! I'm not certain if their comfort level would be raised if one of their own staff were involved in the discussion of their merchandise. Perhaps in the future the liquor could be discussed in one of the neighborhood bars, and the wine shop could be pointed out as a source if people wanted to purchase something after the tour.

The tour guide was friendly, knowledgeable and engaging. I felt like I had a mini tour of Italy. He shared lots of local, historical and culinary tidbits. He kept the group involved and enthusiastic. I have recommended and raved about this tour to several people and will continue to do so and am looking forward to taking the tour of Chinatown.

We enjoyed our tour of the North End very much. Our guide "Jim" was very knowledgeable about the food and history of the Italian's that lived, and now live in the North End. It is a great tour for anyone that wants to know more about Italian cooking. My husband and I have tried many olive oils, but liked the one Jim recommended so well we are taking 2 bottles home with us. Thanks for the great time.

My husband and I really enjoyed the tour. It was a great way to learn the history of the North End. It felt like we were walking back in time when entering the shops we went into, so full of history and character. Our tour guide was very informative and friendly. We asked his opinion for a bite to eat after the tour, and he walked us to the restaurant so we would find it, and we had a great meal to end a great tour! I would really recommend this tour if you love Italian food. It was one of the highlights of our trip to Boston. It was a great value for the money! All the food samples were great! We ran into other members of our tour group the next day, and they felt it was a great tour too.