For the foodie on your Christmas list this year, steer away from cookbooks and kitchen gadgets and instead give the gift of an authentic Pittsburgh food experience.
Several local companies offer food tours highlighting various neighborhoods or ethnic groups in Pittsburgh.
’Burgh Bits and Bites
The oldest of the bunch is Sylvia McCoy’s ’Burgh Bits and Bites Tours, which opened eight years ago after Ms. McCoy and her husband, Don, took a food culture tour in New York City and loved it. Her husband was laid off shortly thereafter, and it “turned out to be a blessing in disguise because he could stay home and take care of the kids, and I started this business,” she said.
Ms. McCoy offers neighborhood-based food tours of the Strip District, South Side, Brookline, Bloomfield, Lawrenceville and the North Side, as well as customized tours for groups. For instance, the South Side tour features stops at The Pretzel Shop, The Milk Shake Factory, Tootie’s Italian Beef and Le Petit Chocolat. Proprietors meet and greet tourgoers and answer their questions.
All tours last about two hours and cost $39 each. Strip District tours are generally scheduled on Fridays, with Brookline, Lawrenceville and Bloomfield offered on Saturdays. This holiday season, there will be tours of Brookline and Lawrenceville on Dec. 28.
To give a tour as a gift, Ms. McCoy suggests buying a gift certificate worth $42 (to cover tax and fees) on burghfoodtour.com and then allowing the recipient to choose the tour he or she finds most intriguing.
When she leads tours, Ms. McCoy often runs into former tour attendees who now frequent the businesses she introduced them to.
“I even had somebody who moved to Brookline after taking my Brookline tour,” she said.
Food Guy Adventures
Newer to the scene is Cory Van Horn’s “Food Guy Adventures.”
Mr. Van Horn, a Michigan native, earned his master’s degree in food studies from Chatham University in 2012 and has settled in Pittsburgh. He developed the business plan for his tours as a graduate school project, but then he “put the plan away in a drawer and got a real job,” he said, laughing.
He still has the “real job,” too, working for an international travel company. “By day, I deal with international travel, and by night, I deal with Pittsburgh,” he said.
This year was his first in the food tour business. Because he lives in Lawrenceville, he said it made sense that he opened with a tour of his own neighborhood. The “Explore Upper Lawrenceville” walking tour featured seven tastings along Butler Street on Saturday afternoons this year.
Mr. Van Horn’s tours are on hiatus until spring and he will use the time to plan three additional tour routes: “Savor, Sip and Shop Central Lawrenceville,” “Strip District Brunch Tour” and “A Taste of Market Square.” He limits his tours to small groups — usually four to six participants, and never more than 12 — as a way to keep the atmosphere intimate as well as to avoid overwhelming the vendors along the route. He said he likes the walking tour format because “you’re seeing the neighborhood from that angle as opposed to from the windows of a motorcoach.”
Gift certificates can be purchased on foodguyadventures.com, and the recipient will receive a code that can be used to book any tour. All tours cost $45 except the Strip District Brunch Tour, which is $65.
Food tours are a natural way for a tourist — or even a lifelong Pittsburgher — to experience the city, Mr. Van Horn said.
“The way you interact and connect with a destination is almost always rooted in food.”
Priory food tour packages
A slightly different — and pricier — way to experience food tours is through a package offered by North Side hotel, The Priory. President and CEO John Graf worked with regional culinary historian Mary Miller of The Fork and the Road to develop customized food tour packages.
There are a total of six packages, including “Hidden North Side,” which visits Randyland and the Mexican War streets as well as the North Side Bake Oven and Troy Hill eateries, and “When Steel Was King,” which includes the Carrie Furnace, Rivers of Steel Museum and Eastern European fare at Emil’s Lounge in Rankin. Ms. Miller leads the tours.
The packages are all listed at thepriory.com (click “Packages,” then “Customized Behind the Scenes Food Tour Packages”).
Packages include an overnight stay at The Priory, a “Made in Pittsburgh” treat basket, two tickets to the guests’ chosen culinary tour and two vouchers to the Monk’s Bar for beer or cocktails. For two guests, the package costs $445, but Mr. Graf suggests assembling a group of friends because the rate goes down for larger groups. For those buying this package as a gift, he suggests ordering a gift certificate through the hotel’s front desk at 412-231-3338.
Group tours
Two additional companies offer food tours on a group-only basis. While these would not make convenient holiday gifts, they would make interesting options for an out-of-the-ordinary holiday party for a corporate office or church group.
Passport to Pittsburgh: Kim Adley runs Passport to Pittsburgh. One of her most popular tours unveils French attractions in Pittsburgh, including a French gothic church and visits to Paris 66 Bistro and Jean-Marc Chatellier’s French Bakery. An Italian-centered tour takes groups to Westmoreland County for stops at DeLallo Italian Marketplace and Fede Pasta. She also offers Greek tours, pierogi tours and a “pizza party on a bus” tour featuring pizza joints in the neighborhood of the tourists’ choice. She’s working on a new tour for the spring – a “Progressive Tea Party” with stops for savory sandwiches, scones and desserts with cups of tea. Check out passporttopittsburgh.com.
Pittsburgh Tours & More: Although this company offers various types of tours including wineries and craft breweries, the most food-centric tour is the “Flavor of Pittsburgh” tour visiting iconic stops such as Prantl’s Bakery, Mancini’s Bakery, Enrico Biscotti and Church Brew Works. To sign up, visit, www.pghtoursandmore.net.
“Even people who have lived here all their lives are discovering new things” on this tour, spokeswoman Kathleen Ganster said.
Rebecca Sodergren: pgfoodevents@htomail.com or on Twitter @pgfoodevents.
First Published: December 7, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
