Michele Topor, Inc.

very informative, fun and entertaining

What a wonderful tour with a very experienced and knowledgeable guide. Jim has so much information which he shares enthusiastically with the group.The sun shone as we walked around the streets tasting lovely cakes and sweets finishing with an amazing dim sum lunch.I have taken both the China town and the North End tours and would highly recommend them both.

Tour leader thoroughly informed and interesting. Moved along at a good pace. Very, very professional and well organized.

Our guide was enthusiastic and very knowledgable about Italian food and preperation. The tour was very personal and detailed. You could sense that our guide really enjoyed her job.

The tour provided an excellent cross section of what the North End has to offer. The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and made the tour most interesting. The group size was just right (10 people) , so that there was good interaction and the guide was able to pay attention to individual questions. I would definitely recommend the tour to friends.

very informative tour and fun out guide was very good I enjoyed all the markets and shops we visited I will go on the Chinatown tour in the spring

Having grown up in a family who enjoyed "cucina di povere", our experience with North End Market Tour was fabulous! Jim helped us remember the times and ways of our grandparents and families. The tour provided us with an opportunity to visit shops that we later revisited. We have shared our experiences with other family members and are looking forward to our next trip to Boston with them! It will be another great day reliving our Italian heritage! We'll fill up our shopping bags with our good finds! I would highly recommend the tour for anyone but especially for people who, like us, lived this way of life! As an aside, our families truly survived with cucina di povere. They ate from the gardens as well as the land. Our family still enjoys (I am sorry that I do not know how to write the Italian dialect!) day-old bread with cabbage, potato and bread in a marinara sauce, spizzatta, and back in the 50's and 60's meats from hunted animals, i.e. rabbit, squirrel, pigeons, black birds, deer, fish, clams, quahogs. I remember going to the beach with the clan in three cars crammed with all the children and the "gravy" and home-made pasta and all the pans to cook them on the shore while the men and children enjoyed the day digging for quahogs! I also remember eating organ meats, knowing now that they were what the family could afford. One of my favorites was something my grandmother called what sounds like sou-freet: a dish in a light marinara sauce containing heart, gizzards, and lung. Delish! My grandfather and uncles always made their own wine in their cellars. When my grandparents' house recently sold, I asked the new owner, whom I happened to know, if he could still smell the wine down there. He can't but admitted that he had determined that that cellar would make a good wine cellar.

Enjoyed learning about the culture and history of the North End as well as visiting the shops.

We have lived near Boston for nearly 40 years and have worked in the city, off and on, for many of those years. Unfortunately, the North End has always been a bit of a mystery to us. Our "adventures" have been largely restricted to Hanover Street with the occasional venture to small restaurants on side streets. As food and travel lovers, this tour (with our best friend of many years ago, now living in CA but also a fan of the North End) was a perfect way to start a long weekend reunion. Jim was our guide and we couldn't have been in better hands. He was a terrific teacher and we learned so much. We enjoyed all of our stops and the tastings along the way. After the tour, we had lunch, created a shopping list and purchased ingredients for a delicious dinner, which we prepared together that evening. We concluded our long weekend with dinner at one of the restaurants listed on the brochure and toasted our friendship and good fortune for having participated in this tour. Thank you for this wonderful experience!

Being from the Boston area, I was looking for a different tour to take visiting family members. I came across "Market Tour of the North End". I found the cost prohibitive for four people, but decided at a later date to take my husband as a birthday gift. We had a very enjoyable time. The rest of the group was friendly. The tour guide, Beth,was full of interesting information about Italian cooking. Some things we knew, some we learned. We followed up by dinner in the North End. All in all, no complaints and have recommended this tour to friends.

very informative and fun Learned a lot.

Enjoyed the tour. Jim was so very knowledgeable. The dim sum was great. After the tour my friend and I went back to some of the stores we visited with Jim on our tour. We were not well received. The same people we saw with Jim were not courteous at all and acted liked they didn't know what we were asking for. The Silky Way and the Herb Shop were the two shops. I will never go back to Chinatown for that reason. The tour is a great take for anyone and I would recommend the tour highly. Joan Pierro

Tour guide was knowledgeable, enthusiastic, organized and entertaining. Will go back to Chinatown often now on my own.

The tour was the best. We saw the North End as you only can if you walk slowly and really look. The guide, Jim, was amazing. Very knowledgeable and interesting. The materials provided were excellent. It was the favorite Boston activity of everyone in our group, 2 men and 2 women.

This was a family and friends groups, the woman was just fabulous, we're dying to do the Chinatown one