If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know how much I love a food tour whilst away on holiday exploring a new city or country. But if you’re new here, let me share with you why you should go out of your way to join a food tour when you’re travelling.

• Insider local knowledge – think if someone was visiting your home town, you’re more likely to recommend to them that adorable, cute tea room that the owner made you feel like part of the family than the chain coffee shop that you’re just a number to them. On a food tour, the guide provides you with recommendations for the rest of your trip, and even better, you get taken to try the delicious dishes!
• Visit off-the-beaten-track neighbourhoods – you’ll see the true living side of a place, not necessarily the shiny, polished tourist areas, for a more authentic experience, where locals eat rather than a tourist version of the dishes. Which often means the food is even better if the locals are tucking in there too.
• Meeting travel buddies – when I was a food tour guide, my phrase was, ‘no one comes on a food tour to have a bad time’. On tours, you meet like-minded travellers to swap stories with and even more recommendations to enrich your experience. I have met people all around the world and have stayed in touch with many of them.
• Food discoveries– there are plenty of delicious foods to try on the tours, that’s not in doubt at all, but you’ll get to experience dishes that you might not have ordered if you spotted them on a menu. Sure in Istanbul, I might not have ordered a whole roasted sheep’s head. But seeing the care and attention the chef put into serving us, glad it was an experience I didn’t miss out on.

I was beyond fortunate that Greekality reached out to experience their Athens Street Food Tour on my first trip to Greece. It was kismet, as Marina reached out to me when we had started our holiday planning to Greece and started the process of looking into food tours.  When looking for a food tour, I look for the number of stops along the tour, the range of food on offer and the reviews of the previous tour goers – and Greekality ticked all of the boxes, and we couldn’t wait to get to Greece!

We had been in Athens for a couple of days before we joined the food tour for our Monday evening tour for the Athens Street Food Tour. Having spent the day exploring all the wonders of the Acropolis and the surrounding areas, we were ready to meet up with the tour. Although, we had prepared for our trip, in the traditionally ‘us’ fashion of creating a spreadsheet of places we saw in categories like rooftop bars, cafes and brunch spots, the tour took us to places we would have never found on our own, which is the magic of a food tour by a knowledgeable guide like Greekality.

The tour offered a taste of Athens street food, sweet and savoury as well as options for veggies along the way and boy did they deliver!

We dived straight in with a traditional Spanakopita and Tiropita, a buttery pie with plenty of tender spinach and feta or for the Tiropita, a cheese pie with a creamy cheesy filling with horiatiko phyllo pastry, which is slightly thicker standard phyllo pastry with olive oil added to the dough as a style of dough used more by families than the thinner shop bought pastry. Both were buttery, flakey and flavoursome, the best kind of street food! A great start to the tour, my favourite was the spanakopita with the spinach cutting through the salty cheese.

There were plenty of samples of each for anyone wanting seconds or even thirds, although I know it’s a marathon not a sprint and wanted to make sure I had room for each of the tastings. Our guide, Jenny, mentioned any samples left at the end of the evening would be given to local homeless people, which was great to hear nothing would be wasted and could be enjoyed by others too.

I find it interesting how food cultures and traditions move with people as they travel and settle. Our next stop was to try Peinirli, boat shaped pizzas, with a long fermented dough to impart a depth of flavour to these quick snacks, as well as a wickedly good chew to the crust. Shaped, topped and baked in front of your eyes in the shop, with a selection of toppings to satisfy anyone’s cravings. Peinirli originated from Turkey and brought to Greece by Greek refugees from Asia Minor and the Black Sea region in the early 20th century and the boat shape was to remind them of their fishing boats from home.

It wouldn’t be an Athens Street Food Tour, without trying a souvlaki! With everything you could possibly want in a meal, tender grilled meat (chicken or pork) or veggies cooked over a coal grill for that smokey, charred flavour, freshest tomatoes, piping hot seasoned chips, cooling tzatziki, made with of course, Greek yoghurt, all wrapped in the pillowy soft, chewy pita. Thought to be one of the oldest cooking methods, with portable stone skewer stands found dating back to 17th BC, a Greek dish that isn’t going anywhere and rightly so. We had the choice to have ours served with a local beer or wine, which was perfection pairing.

We had tried one on the island of Hydra, before we got to Athens, and I might have a soft spot now for a souvlaki and will have to hunt out a good one in England, or will simply have to come back to Athens for my fix!

At this point, we were all ready for a sweet treat and nothing hits the spot like Loukoumades, deep-fried dough balls drizzled with honey and sprinkled with cinnamon or nuts. Thought to be one of the oldest pastries to be recorded, created over 2,000 years ago since 776 B.C and claimed to be given to the wining athletes at the first Olympics and where modern doughnuts have moved to the ring shape to represent an Olympic ring – a fact which since the tour, I have told everyone who will listen to me! 

Now with more modern flavours severed alongside ice cream and strong Greek coffee, we got to try a popular flavour of Pistachio and White Chocolate sauce slathered over the perfectly golden, crisp yet soft loukoumades.

But was on our spreadsheet, way back when we were still in grey England, was to try the Loukoumades with Greek honey and cinnamon, and oh my, they were divine! No surprise how they’ve remained popular since 776 BC!

To continue the sweet section of the tour, we got to go behind the scenes into a local bakery making the most divine smelling Koulouri, sold around the city in the stands below and a cross between a bagel/pretzel but also unique to itself, with the dough rolled in grape musk syrup and liberally covered in sesame seeds, which when baked, a super nutty flavour. Our Airbnb was actually two doors away from the bakery we stopped at with the tour and had walked past it each day on our adventures, not knowing the bakery treats it housed.

Another highlight of joining a food tour, is having access to the specialists creating the food for you to sample, without the tour, we wouldn’t have been able to have a look at the bakery making the koulouri bread throughout the evening ready to sell fresh to the city the next day.

Our finial stop was for one of my new favourite desserts, that I hadn’t heard of before trying on the tour. Portokalopita or Greek Orange Cake, is a crazy moist cake, with a slightly set custard like texture with the fresh fragrant orange syrup laced over the top. What I loved most was the cake had a secret ingredient which I think people would be hard pushed to identify when eating the cake. The structure of the cake comes from dry, crumbed phyllo pastry into the cake batter. Blew my mind and I had to make one as soon as I got home.

The cake was served with an ice cream made with 80% buffalo milk for a deep creamy richness and flavoured with mastic, which the resin from the tree give a slightly pine flavour but also a chewy texture to the ice cream. Paired with the sweetness of the cake, the ice cream cut through for a moreish dessert.

What was lovely aside from the many delicious treats and tantalising facts from our guide, three hours earlier we were all strangers on our separate trips and throughout the stops and small talk amongst us, we bonded over other travels or dishes had on different trips. Which lead to me and my friend having a drink after the tour with two ladies who were solo travelers on the tour, also meeting for the first time that evening and we shared a toast to ladies who travel and love good food!

Thank you so much to Marina and her lovely team of guides who made us so welcome to not only the tour but to Athens and the wonders of the city. If you have a trip to Athens planned and want a great way to explore the city, check out the various tours Greekality have to offer with tours starting from €59 per person for a 3 hour tour, with options suitable for vegetarians. They also host a series of experiences like ‘Athens Cook like a Greek with a chef‘ and ‘Athens Wine Tasting Tour & Nightlife’.

 

*Although our tour was gifted, all opinions are my own.

Pinterest!

Save this article to Pinterest, pin the below image!