Food tours, cooking classes give authentic taste of culture

Food tours, cooking classes give authentic taste of culture

Most food tours have lunch or dinner versions, last about three hours, come with a mile of walking, and include four to eight stops.

Some are mobile feasts, where you stand and share a plate of little bites, while others feature sit-down dining experiences.

All will fill you up, and should be considered a meal and a tour, wrapped up in one (making the splurge easier to justify).

The best ones move at a brisk pace and max out at eight or 10 people — which means you can squeeze into small shops and boutique restaurants.

Before this tour, I never knew that the shape of a croissant could tell me if it was made with butter.

To dress up the bread, we were given some duck rillettes (looks like tuna salad but tastes much better) and thinly sliced ham.

Next we followed our noses to a nearby fromagerie, where the cheese mongers, standing white-coated like pharmacists, welcomed us in.

How to choose from the wedges, cylinders, balls and miniature hockey pucks of cheese?

[...] at last, we settled in at communal tables at the local wine shop to consume our pungent spread, doing our best to imitate the way French people make the most out of eating.

Wandering with our chef from shop to shop and through a bustling market, we learned plenty: “de ligne” means a fish was wild-caught; “élevé en” tells you it was farm-raised.