Richmond's Historic Market Food Tour with 5 Authentic Tastings

Madeleine was great. We really loved the Rich history of this beautiful city. And every food was superb. We highly recommend this tour and our guide!

Madeline was wonderful. Great pace. Great food choices. Full of Richmond history and recommendations. Sweets. Meats. Seafood. Yummy

We had lots of fun on our food tour of historic Richmond today. Wonderful learning some history as we walked around the town between our dining experiences. Kahrell was a fun guide who loved sharing information about the city, and Maddie, who was a guide trainee, also had lots to share. It was great having both of them as our guides today! Our favorite foods were the She Crab Soup, the Goat Cheese Garden Pizza on sourdough crust, and the Red Velvet Waffles! And there was so much other food that we also enjoyed! We are so stuffed! We will definitely be planning more food tours as we visit other cities in our future travels!

I have done a lot of food tours and noticed two things on this tour that were not great. First, our guide, Kharnell, was lovely. Just new on the job so I give him grace for sure. However, we found it odd that he never ordered ahead and didn’t announce we were a food tour upon arrival. We walked in like a regular table and were handed menus and asked what we wanted to order. Our guide said one order of whatever we were sampling that day and we were fine with water. It was super uncomfortable and the servers all seemed a bit confused. This also meant nothing was ready when we arrived so we waited an inordinate amount of time at each stop. The second thing I didn’t like was the last food stop which was an Ethiopian restaurant. This was a communal dining experience which I think is an inappropriate choice for a group of strangers. Like everyone digging into the same plate of food with the bread as your spoon. There was double dipping and licking of fingers and this grossed me out so much. The owner was lovely and very gracious, however, this has no business being on a food tour.

We enjoyed an our time with Kahrell! He was friendly, knowledgeable about the city and a delightful table companion!

The food and stops were very well selected and the food was amazing. I had no idea that Richmond had an interesting food scene. The tour of the capital grounds is very impressive, especially the unique and historical bronze statues and historical vignettes shared by the guide. The duration of the trip was much longer than described (it was more like 11-3:30 than 11-2). I would give this experience five stars except that the tour guide inappropriately shared her political opinions and instigated several negative conversations about controversial topics on our tour. This was constant throughout the tour, very unprofessional and ruined what was otherwise a delightful and interesting tour. The Southern octogenarian on the tour politely attempted to inform her that this was not the place nor time but she ignored her and others who made it very clear that we didn't want to explore these conversations. She was also not patricianly sensitive to concerns about sharing food. For 11 people five bowls of soup were ordered and we were expected to eat from the same bowls with others. Would it be possible for each person on the tour to have their own small bowl? At the Ethiopian restaurant, family style is the way food is served. However, requests to have food separated on personal plates were ignored (since it is the cultural experience to eat the food without utensils and so you use your hands and the bread). We were happy to experience the culture but felt uncomfortable "double-dipping" with complete strangers and were shocked when our polite requests to remedy this in a way that still respects the cultural norms of the restaurant were completely blown off as if we were insensitive to their way of eating. At the end of the tour, we were relieved to be done with the nonsense of the political jabs and her unwillingness to accommodate basic requests to keep our germs on our own plates. I would recommend the tour with these caveats.

We thought we were going on a food tour, but the first 1 1/2 hours were dedicated to talking about the history of Richmond and the statues in the capital park. Truly enjoyed the food portion. The food was excellent! History portion was way to long.

Choose this tour to stay away from political rants but the first hour was full of her opinions on history. The food places we visited were well chosen and the tastings excellent. Come hungry because the potion sizes are good.

This tour was canceled the morning of. We received a very polite note explaining that several of the stops were going to be closed that day so they could not conduct the tour. My question is 2 part: one, if these are vendors they work with consistently, why would they have not known their schedules ahead of time; and two, their disclaimer on the booking states that they have the right to change up the itinerary stops based on which food establishments are available. So I dont see the problem, surely they could have found 5 eateries to visit as we walked around Richmond! We have never had this problem in the past, weather I could understand, but their excuse really reflected on their professionalism and lack of concern for their customers, who at the last minute had no recourse in booking with a different company. We had also stayed an extra day in Richmond just to taje the tour before driving to our next destination. In my opinion, I would never book with this "foodie" companyagain.

Excellent experience! Val aka “Tish” is a wonderful guide. The other family that we toured with became a part of our military/first responders family. I highly recommend this tour! The food was phenomenal! Thank you Val!!