Edible Excursions

A Bay Area walking food tour company since 2004

Edible Excursions runs its own walking food tours with its own guides in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Founder Lisa Rogovin writes that she "founded Edible Excursions in 2004," and the about page calls the company "San Francisco's Longest Running Woman-Owned Food Tour Company" and "100% locally owned and operated." In San Francisco the public tours cover the Ferry Building, North Beach, Japantown and the Mission District; across the bay they cover North Berkeley and Oakland, with Temescal and Uptown named on the site. Prices are in US dollars.

The company's origin story is specific: it "got our start taking guests of the Four Seasons Hotel around town to meet local chefs and taste the best of the region." Each walk includes "signature tastes from seven to nine different stops along the way," and the site says the guides do not use scripts, so "no two tours are ever exactly alike." Many guides, it adds, "have been with the company since our start."

The public tours and what they cost

The Ferry Building and Ferry Plaza Farmers Market Food Tour is the company's original, "established in 2004." It runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10:00am to 11:30am at $95 per person for a 1.5-hour tour. The page lists chocolate from Recchiuti, macarons from Miette, cheese tastings at Epicurean Trader with bread from Berkeley's Acme Bread, and ube churros and chicken tortas from Señor Sisig, with other possible stops including Nopa Fish, Humphry Slocombe, Peaches Patties and Cholita Linda. Because the farmers market runs on those three days, the site says tours on other days spend more time inside the building.

A longer version pairs the same tour with an Alcatraz Excursion: the tasting tour in the morning, then an afternoon ferry to Alcatraz Island for a self-guided visit. It is priced at $181 per person, which the page says "includes $47.95 face value Alcatraz ticket."

The North Beach Food Tour runs Wednesdays and Fridays from 11am to 2pm, at $125 per person for 3 hours, with coal-fired thin crust pizza, a meatball sandwich on focaccia and Sacripantina cake among the tastes. The Japantown Food Tour runs Fridays and Saturdays from 11am to 2pm at $137 per person; the site notes San Francisco has "one of only three remaining Japantowns in the United States," and tastes may include onigiri from Kissako Tea, takoyaki from Yama-Chan and ramen from Hinodeya Ramen Bar. The Mission 18th St Food Tour runs Saturdays from 11:00am to 2:00pm at $137 per person, or $158 with alcohol, with stops such as Piglet and Co, Arepas, Chuck's Takeaway and front-of-the-line access at Bi-Rite Creamery.

The North Berkeley Food Tour, formerly the Gourmet Ghetto Food Tour, runs Thursdays and Saturdays from 11am to 2pm at $137 per person for 3 hours. It explores the neighborhood the site calls "the birthplace of California Cuisine and farm-to-table eating," made famous by Alice Waters' Chez Panisse, with stops at Saul's deli, the Peet's Coffee flagship, The Cheese Board Collective and The Local Butcher Shop. The Oakland tours are introduced on the homepage, which names resident celebrity chef Tanya Holland among the local guides, though the tour details are not listed there.

The guides and the day itself

The about page names the team. Alongside Lisa Rogovin, it lists guides with the tours they lead: Rebecca Sibrack, a chef and anthropologist, for the Ferry Building, North Berkeley and Oakland Temescal; Tori Ritchie, a cooking teacher and cookbook author, for the Ferry Building and North Beach; Alice Kawatatsu and Minru Hwang for Japantown; and Adrian Spinelli, a food and drinks journalist, for several San Francisco tours. The site describes the whole team as "food industry professionals - food TV alumni, chefs, award-winning food writers, and longtime restaurant workers."

The North Berkeley page includes a "Know Before You Go" section. Stops can change "depending upon availability." Dietary restrictions "can be accommodated with a 7-day advance notice," and the page lists vegetarians, vegans, pescatarians and gluten intolerant diets. The private tour FAQ says most guests "leave comfortably full, often replacing breakfast or lunch."

The site does not publish meeting points for the public tours, a group-size cap for them, or which languages the guides speak. It does not mention accessibility or how much walking each route involves.

Booking, cancellations and private tours

Public tours are booked through the calendar, and every tour page adds "custom tour dates based on availability." The North Berkeley page states the one published cancellation rule: "All tours require a minimum number to operate," and if a tour does not reach it, guests are "notified 48 hours in advance" and receive a full refund. Gift cards are sold in the main menu.

Private tours are a large part of the business. The custom tour page says the company has run food experiences "for groups up to 350 people" for over 20 years, and its FAQ says it can take "intimate groups of two to corporate events with more than 100 guests," seven days a week. Private tours run throughout San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, can follow a public itinerary or be built from scratch, and can include beer, wine, cocktails or non-alcoholic drinks and add-ons such as chef presentations and hands-on workshops. The homepage adds that "we also offer cooking classes and cocktail making classes upon request." The page lists occasions from team building, conferences and client entertainment to birthdays, proposals, family reunions and school field trips, and promises a reply "within 1 business day." Testimonials on the page come from staff at Uber, Salesforce and Google. Contact is by phone at 415-806-5970 or info@edibleexcursions.net.

What the site leaves open, and who it suits

Beyond the minimum-number rule, the site does not publish a cancellation or refund window for guests who change plans, and it does not give private tour prices, which are quoted after a request form that asks for a budget. The Oakland tour details, meeting points and public group sizes are not stated on the tour pages.

Edible Excursions suits travelers and locals who want a sit-down-meal's worth of tastes on a guided neighborhood walk, with published days, times and prices for each route and named guides with real food backgrounds. The short Ferry Building tour and its Alcatraz add-on fit a tight San Francisco schedule, while the 3-hour neighborhood walks and the large private program suit groups and teams.