Foods of NY Tour Diary: Greenwich Village and SoHo

Getting the low down on Il Mulino on the Foods of NY Greenwich Village / SoHo tour.

Very few people, only 35 in fact, are lucky enough to get to tag along with Calvin Trillin each year for his fabled food tour through Greenwich Village, SoHo, Little Italy and Chinatown. Fortunately, there's an alternative for the rest of us that hits on some of the same high notes and has plenty of charms of its own. 

The tour in question is the Foods of New York's walking tour, which I was recently invited to join. Of the four lower Manhattan tours they offer I chose the Greenwich Village / SoHo one even though I'd lived in the Village for a few years and had done a fair amount of food exploring there in the past. Mostly I was just curious to see how many neighborhood gems I'd left undiscovered.

After a quick introduction by our tour guide, Raheem, we were off to Indian Bread Co on Bleecker where we snacked on Kathi rolls and got to know each other a little bit. It turned out that I was somewhat of an anomaly being the only male as well as the only city dweller. The group was made up of a few tourists, a group on a corporate outing and a few ladies from Long Island who were in the city for the day. Over the course of the following three hours we stopped into a number of restaurants that were new to me (Monte's, La Lanterna di Vittorio) and a bunch retail shops, all of which I was familiar with, but happy to be revisiting. Surprisingly, to me at least, the tour didn't just consist of walking from food shop to food shop snacking on tidbits, though there was plenty of that. Raheem turned out to be a fountain of knowledge about local history and shared much local lore with us along the way.

Just a few of the 3,000 lbs of fresh, hand made mozzarella made at Joe's Dairy each day!

Overall he did an admirable job of entertaining us for the three hours he had us and all of the quick bites we tried were tasty, including the delicious "pizza" at Grandaisy Bakery, also on Mr. Trillin's tour. A quick survey of my tour companions near the end of the tour indicated that everyone had a great time. So if you're coming into the city and are looking for something fun to do for a few hours around lunchtime or even if you live in the city and want to find out more about the food and history of the Village and its environs, Foods of NY offers a great way to learn about both. Best of all you don't have to compete with a few thousand rapid food loving New Yorker readers to score a spot.

Tour info: Tickets are $42 to $65 and there's enough snacking along the route to more than satisfy the average mid-day hunger. My tour was at its 16 person limit so I'd recommend booking on the early side if you can. Visit the Foods of NY web site for full details.