For those of you looking for a day trip to LA with some sights and sounds even the natives may not know about, I have this for you. Melting Pot Food Tours (www.meltingpottours.com), founded in 2008 by sisters Diane and Lisa Scalia, offers two walking food tours of LA. What better way to experience the culture and history of a city then through it's food. Like most of the world's great food cities, LA's gastronomy is best experienced on foot.
The Original Farmers Market tour makes 11 stops, and participants are feed an unbelievable amount of food. Caviar cheese, baguettes and olives from Monsieru Marcel, fresh peanut butter from Magee's House of Nuts, sausage and deep-fried yucca at Pamapas Grill, and spider rolls at Mishima, a small sushi restaurant in a strip mall on 3rd Street
The other route that the sisters offer is in Pasadena. Here you might stop at up to nine restaurants or shops, including Tutti Gelati, carne asada tortas and pineapple agua fresca at Tortas Mexico, shrimp shumai and tea sampling at Bird Pick Tea and Herb.
If a walking food tour appeals to you, there are other tour choices, including Six Taste, which takes guests through Little Tokyo and downtown LA, James Beard-nominated chef and author Robert Danhi's Asian cuisine tours through neighborhoods including Little Saigon and Thai Town, and LA Commons' Trekking LA series, which offers summertime culinary tours of East Hollywood and elsewhere.
What I particularly like about the Scalia sisters tours is that they patronize only independently owned and operated businesses. The personal stories that these accessible business owners share provide the bulk of the tours' humor and entertainment. So next time you're looking for something unusual to do, give one of these walking food tours a try. You'll not only sample some wonderful food, but you'll get a chance to see some of LA's most interesting neighborhoods, up close and personal.
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