North End Market Tour

Great tour. Fascinating discoveries at every turn. Very enjoyable tastes -- wish we had time to shop.

The tour guide was very knowledgable with Italian cuisine, Italian culture, and history of the North End. She showed the group the hidden treasures of the North End and took away from the main stream commercial stopping spots like Mike's Pastries and Modern Day Pastery (no offense). I believe she explained it best by looking past Hanover street and exploring the riches the North End has to offer by taking side streets. Great tour and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Beth, our tour guide, was exceptional. Her overview at the beginning of the tour set the stage for what was to come. The establishments we visited were warm, friendly and generous. This was our second North End Tour in 5 years. We will probably be back again. We also have taken several Zerve tours in New York City that have been equally wonderful.

I went with a couple of friends and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The tour guide was knowledgable and personable. The local shop owners / employees were friendly and made us feel welcomed.

Our recent trip to Boston included the Italian Maket Tour of the North End. I highly recommend it to those interested in food & wines. We got a wondeful overview of the area from the tour guide and then the real fun began. Visits to wonderful, small shops that are unique. Samples of delicious pastries, yummy cheeses & meats, an awesome lemon slush & the best balsamic vinegar that I have ever encountered. All of this and more...A wonderful way to spend an afternoon in Boston!

Our tour guide , Don, was very knowledgeable about the North End and very effective in describing the history and current state of the area. Although I grew up in this area as a child, I never really had someone show me, in such detail, the various attributes provided by the local vendors. He opened up doors to a past I had almost forgotten about ..... Because of the wonderful presentation provided by Don, and the very thoughtful tour route, I will make it a point to visit the North End Market more often. And, I certainly will consider other tours from your site, especially if the tour guide meets the same wonderful standards as provided by Don. Thank you, Mario Lento

Not enough, to much talking. Also guide should get there 30 minutes prior or at least 15. Not right at 10 am.

I have done several food tours in different Cities. I was a little disappointed in the lack of and small sample portions. It is the first tour that had me searching for lunch immediately after we finished. Not for a place to eat that we had visited but because I was hungry. The guide was knowledgeable and provided great cooking tips and history on the area. I don't think that I would recomend the tour to out of town visitors. Locals and true foodies that have access to the interesting shops that we visited would undoubtdly have found this tour to be worth every penny. All and all it was well done.

My sister and sister-in-law and I had a girls' getaway weekend. My sister-in-law had read about this tour in the Boston Globe and so we signed up. It was an afternoon with intermittant rain showers and our tour time was from 2 to 5 p.m., but it was so much fun that we forgot about the rain and the time just flew. Our guide was Beth and she was a wealth of information about the history of the North End and the Italian diet and the arabic influence on Italian cuisine, especially in Sicily. It is clear that Beth is passionate about Italian cuisine and she was always checking to see if we had any questions before we moved on to the next stop on the tour. We enjoyed the tastings very much---and we feel that we learned enough to try buying and preparing some of the exotic vegetables and fruits that we sampled. As soon as the tour was completed, we returned to some of the shops on the tour to make some purchases, and then had a leisurely wonderful meal at Monica's Trattoria. We enjoyed our tour so much that we have already agreed that we will take the Chinatown tour the next time we get together.

These tours are fantastic. The tour guides are so well informed and have so much insider information to share. The shop owners are welcoming and make you feel like you're a regular. I highly recommend this tour. It's a little long, so be prepared to stand a lot.