Avital Food Tours of San Francisco

Avital provided a unique experience for our group which was custom designed for a high end clientele. The event experience was amazing, and the tour guide Nikki was fantastic - great history, kept us on schedule, knew EVERY name of those in our group, and made everyone feel special. The planning experience was pretty good -- it was challenging because of the time zone differences between team members but they managed to put this event together in pretty short order. What I would work to improve next time are where most experiences fall down = in the handoffs. Handoff between the sales team and the event planning team was like getting thrown over the wall. Although requested, menu sharing & connection with the tour guide was not provided in advance. This caused suprises - like fried fish after the steak house, when we were expecting dessert. We paid top of the line for everything, including an extra fee for guests to have drinks that were not the pre-fix menu drinks. Despite that, our guide discussed in front of guests charges that we would need to pay out of pocket when one of our guests ordered a nice whiskey. He was told it wasn't available but could see it on the shelf which left a poor impression. Overall a pretty good experience, but definitely opportunities to improve.

Nikki was phenomenal at our mission food tour. Everything we ate was delicious and was such a nice paced tour where we weren’t rushed at each restaurant. Would highly recommend for your next outing whether you’re local to San Francisco or visiting from out of town!

This was truly remarkable! A phenomenal experience from start to finish. Tasty food, history lesson, and an interactive tour throughout a historic area of San Francisco!

Best food tour I've ever gone on. I reserved the tour via "GetYourGuide." Nikki was the best tour guide, she made the tour. I loved the stories about North Beach, the foods, the ethic groups, and any other info I wanted. My first time in SF was so memorable and I plan to return and book the Mission food tour.

We are thankful for the wonderful things that one can experience in North Beach. Our guide was polite and friendly, and we appreciated that. She was kind enough to take some group pictures and send them to us, and that was appreciated. (The pictures contain the website and company name of the company on them. I would have preferred to just have the pictures with our group but no ads. I don't think any other food tour we have been on in any country has put ads into pictures like this. However, I was able to edit this information out, so we still have a nice picture.) We have done some other food tours in San Francisco with other companies, and perhaps we have been spoiled a bit by our amazing experiences with the other ones. I think it is probable that someone who had never done a food tour before would have had an enjoyable time on this one. On some other food tours we learned a lot more history than we did on this one. We learned some history, but it was more simply about food. That may be what some people want, of course, although I would have preferred more history. It is possible that we are making unfair comparisons with another tour company with which we recently did a Chinatown food tour. The guide was telling us historical information that was fascinating practically the entire time (as well as telling us about food). Not everyone may be able to be as amazing as this other company's guide was. If someone goes on the North Beach tour, he or she may not get as much Italian food as he might expect. We went, for example, to a place that served Chinese food. It was fine, but I know by experience that there are amazing restaurants that serve incredible food in North Beach that, at least in my opinion, were better than at least some of our stops. It felt really strange eating Chinese food in the Italian district while not having any pizza, pasta dishes, etc. (except that we did have gnocchi at one place, and while gnocchi is not my favorite, it was better gnocchi than what I have had elsewhere). We had portions of cioppino at another restaurant; that was probably my favorite of the food dishes we had on the North Beach tour, although the bibs that they had contained a curse word on them (it is part of this restaurant's advertising and is also on its sign). I would not recommend that for children (or, for that matter, as an adult it is not my preference having to see curse words on everyone); it would prevent me from going back there. Maybe on other tours they have more Italian food but they did not on our tour because there was someone in our group that had a particular food allergy. If so, then it isn't the company's fault, as they would absolutely need to be safe in what they allow a group to have in that situation. But in comparison with food tours we have done in the Mission District and in Chinatown with other companies, we would recommend those tours over this one. Again, perhaps this is not the company's fault; maybe they couldn't help it because of the person that had a food allergy and normally they go to other restaurants.