Hi friends, welcome back! Today I'm taking you along on a Lower East Side Historical Food Tour with Devour Tours that Jon and I were invited to join. Most of their tours are in Europe, but they've recently launched some in NYC and Boston. Devour Tours recently joined the company Walks which provides sightseeing tours and experiences across major cities in Europe, NYC, DC, and Boston. This tour cost $79 a person and runs for three hours, which seems to be the going rate for this type of tour. Our tour started at 10:30am on a Sunday and there were ten participants including us. We discovered that one of the ladies on the tour lives in our building, small world!
Katz Deli was our first and favorite spot of the tour. Jon and I had never been to this iconic NYC spot or tried their pastrami. This deli opened in 1888 and has been family run ever since. Per their website, "Our corned beef and pastrami is cured using a slower method, which best flavors the meat, without injecting chemicals, water, or other additives to speed the process. Our finished product can take up to a full 30 days to cure, while commercially prepared corned beef is often pressure-injected (or "pumped") to cure in 36 hours". We got to try their pastrami and rye bread and it was a hit, although we all wished there was more to go around.
If you've seen the movie When Harry Met Sally, this is where they eat, and he delivers the famous "I'll have what she's having" line. There is even a sign to commemorate the table they sat at.
Economy Candy is the oldest candy store in NYC and has been around since the 1930s. They import a lot of candy too so the variety of products is a little overwhelming. Our guide gave us about ten minutes to look around, but any candy bought was not included in the ticket price.
Our next stop was at the Caribbean restaurant El Castillo De Jagua. We got a typical Dominican breakfast sample of mangú (mashed plantains), fried eggs, fried cheese, and salami. This restaurant has been visited by celebrities such as Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, Benjamin Bratt, and Luis Guzman.
We then headed over to Formaggio Kitchen in Essex Market for a little cheese sampling.
Orchard Grocer is a vegan deli and food market that we stopped at next. We tried "The Edith" with a house made carrot lox, house made cashew cream cheese, capers, dill, and scallions on a fresh bagel. This bagel is $12 which seems expensive for a NYC bagel without protein. We could appreciate the creativity, but the lox had some mixed reactions in the group.
Shu Jiao Fuzhou Cuisine is a delicious, incredibly inexpensive Chinese spot. You can get 10 dumplings for $4.50 but our guide got the 6 dumplings for $3. We also got the noodles with peanut butter sauce that was only $3, although this was hard to share.
Doughnut Plant was the final stop on the tour and I've been to various locations across the city and it always delivers. We all shared a black & white donut, coffee cake, and a regular glazed donut.
Overall I appreciated the variety of food on our stop and the food tasted great, I think our guide just miscalculated the portion sizes at a few of the stops. What stop caught your eye?
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