Walking food tours: eating a city on foot

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Why we walk between bites

Some neighborhoods are made for eating on foot: dense, old and full of counters that have been open for generations. Walking between them gives you time to digest, to see how the streets fit together and to hear why a gilda has three ingredients or a muffuletta needs olive salad.

Two of our walks are in Europe. The Bologna Pasta Class and Market Walk spends an hour in the Quadrilatero, tasting mortadella and Parmigiano on Via Drapperie and taking a coffee at the bar, before the class. The San Sebastián Pintxos Walk starts at seven every evening, all year: six bars in the Parte Vieja and enough food for dinner, with txakoli and cider for guests 18 and over.

Portugal: Lisbon, Porto and the Douro Valley is the longer version. Lisbon and Porto are cities to walk, and the tour does: tram 15 to Belém for pastéis de nata, a morning up through Mouraria and Alfama to a tasca, then the Ribeira, the Bolhão market and across the Dom Luís I bridge to the port lodges of Gaia.

In New Orleans the French Quarter Food Walk links six stops in about a mile and a half: café au lait and a beignet, a muffuletta, gumbo, oysters on Bienville Street, a warm praline on Royal Street and a Sazerac for guests 21 and over, or a house lemonade. It runs Thursday to Saturday, all year, and is enough for lunch.

The day walks are rated Easy and stay on level streets. Lisbon and Porto are hilly, with steep cobbles for two to three hours a day, so that tour is Moderate. Comfortable shoes matter more than anything else you pack.