I Can't Believe I Ate My Way Through Chinatown!

Shirley Fong-Torres is absolutely fabulous! She's vivacious and and fun and a great story-teller. Chinese food has never been my favourite - until this tour. The food was wonderful. It's a great tour for people on their own, because the group is small. There were 7 in our tour. I can't rave enough about it. I've already recommended it to all my friends.

I went on this tour alone and met such great people. Shirley was an amazing host, she made great effort to get to know each and everyone of us in the group. She was charming, funny as all get out and very knowledgeable. We ate like mad people. I learned so much about the culture and origins of chinese people and food. AND I ate the 1000 yr old egg!!! I highly recommend this tour!

Our guide Frank was a native of Chinatown. He knew history of the area and had great knowledge of the food. We dined at very authentic restaurants. The places where the locals go and not tourists. He was very personable and made the tour enjoyable.

Ready your taste buds, wear expandable waists, prepare your smile muscles...the necessary ingredients for "Eating Your Way Through Chinatown" with Shirley Fong-Torres. This was my 3rd, yes, 3rd Wok Wiz Tour and they just keep getting better and better. The food, the people, the cultural and gustatory experience - and of course, Shirley's humor and insights. I'll be going again!

Shirley Fong-Torres is a delight! Charming, warm, and full of enthusiasm and energy about her hometown: "Chinatown." However, on the day my friend and I took her tour, both of the restaurants she had planned to take us to, for breakfast and for lunch, were closed, and we spent an undue amount of time roaming around looking for another place to have some jook. Luckily, I had a piece of hard candy in my purse or else my blood sugar would have crashed. The places where we ended up having our two meals were both undistinguished in their cuisine and none of the dishes were very different from what I would normally order at a Chinese restaurant. That said, the rest of the tour's highlights were wonderful. From the musician/barber in the alley to the fabulous tea shop where we learned to "rinse" our tea leaves to the amazing Dim Sum shop where we had truly spectacular items, nothing was lacking. The only thing we would have enjoyed having more of would have been a little more history/background information from Shirley herself about the culture and locale. Again, lots of fun with friendly companions.

We had quite an enjoyable time with Shirley. She's very knowledgeable and really knows her stuff. We tasted everything from 100 year old eggs to chinese custard. Learned about chinese teas, and ate delicious food constantly. I highly recommend this tour - it is unlike any other.

Delightful company, but we expected more detail about the foods and more of the unique and special dishes of Chinese cuisine. Different regional styles might have been emphasized. The tour seemed more geared to the palate of a tourist from the Midwest than a person visiting from a large metropolitan area who has eaten Chinese food fairly regularly. Where was the jellyfish, dried oyster, frog's legs, etc? The pork with salt fish and bitter-melon with beef were definitely along the right line. And the stories behind them, their culinary significance, were a treasured part of the tour. Add more of that sort of thing. Our expectation wasn't just to taste a lot of food, but to taste and learn about the really unique dishes that we would never know to order unless we spoke Chinese. This said, I would recommend this tour to anyone visiting San Francisco who wanted to eat good Chinese food with the fun, exhuberant Shirley Fong-Torres. She is so worh the price of a ticket.

While Shirley is a nice, friendly, energetic woman, she's a salesperson. There was a violent occurrence at the scheduled meeting point prior to her arrival and, when told about it, she seemed thoroughly uninterested, since it didn't affect her business. The tour got started more than 20 minutes late. Shirley told us we'd be moving from funky to elegant to questionable to fantastic. Why funky and questionable when I've paid $75? Breakfast was at a dive and was pretty vile. Our visit to a teashop was the highlight of the tour in that we were given a brief education about tea, had a tasting, and it was a lovely setting. We proceeded to the "street food" which was gummy, greasy, bland, cheap dim sum that we ate standing on Broadway. Then, the piece de resistance - our lunch. This was billed as a banquet that would fill you up for the rest of the day...at least that's what the reviews said. My friends and I were expecting quality, not just quantity. There was neither. We were taken to the Imperial Palace and told that it had been recently renovated. My friend used the bathroom and found it disgusting. The staff was unprepared for us when we arrived and Shirley had to get heavy with them. All this aside, the food was nothing I would eat if given a choice. We had some decent duck and a somewhat tasty prawn dish, but everything else was so dull that there were platters left on the table. No one was interested in a second helping. I overheard others on the tour talking about their disappointment as well. My friends and I feel ripped off. What saved the day was a trip to Mitchell's for ice cream right after this sumptuous feast! We were not full, to say the least.

Not only does the guide take you to wonderful places to explore Chinese food, but the information he shared and the people at the sites share, really enhanced the tour. Not to forget, the food was outstanding.

I had a ton of fun on the "I can't believe I ate my way through Chinatown " tour. Frank, our host, was vivacious, fun and humorous and we ate SO well. I never would have tried some of the menu items - not that they were "scary" but I'd have stayed with something familiar and I loved almost everything. I particularly enjoyed the tea tasting. Great tour!