8 Food Tours in Europe You Need to Take

Started in Rome in 2011, tours with Eating Europe take travelers on "unparalleled, non-touristy" culinary journeys that get at the heart—and stomach—of off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods in some of the world's great cities (including Florence, Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, and London). We love their half-day East End tour in London, where you can sample English cheeses, fish and chips, curries along Brick Lane, and mouth-watering salted caramel tarts during stops at bakeries, markets, shops, pubs, and restaurants.

The next time you’re in Rome, consider joining this food tour, which combines two of the city’s greatest pleasures: food and Vespas. American expat Annie Ojile founded Scooteroma as a way of sharing her new home with family and friends. One of her friendly and knowledgeable guides will pick you up at your hotel and zip around the city, stopping for a cappuccino and cornetto at the old-school bakery Panella, sampling the cult-favorite street food at Trapizzino, grabbing gelato on the Aventine Hill, and relaxing with a bite at Necci dal 1924 in the street art-filled neighborhood of Pigneto.

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Emilia Romagna is often touted as Italy’s culinary capital, but the more under-the-radar region of Piedmont, in northwestern Italy, is where you should go to experience wine and truffles—two of the country’s greatest delicacies. Every fall, Piedmont celebrates harvest and white truffle season with all kinds of festivities, including the annual Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo Bianco d’Alba (Alba White Truffle Fair). Join tour operator Imago Artis for a culinary trip to the region: you'll visit some of the region’s best wineries, feast on fresh pasta at a local favorite trattoria in Barbaresco, and even partake in a truffle hunt in the woods around Alba led by a veteran truffle hunter and his trusty hound.

Want to take a deep dive into Portugal’s rich culinary traditions? Consider Intrepid Travel’s eight-day Portugal Real Food Adventure, which starts in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela and makes its way south through Vigo, Porto, the Douro Valley, the Alentejo, Evora, and eventually ends in Lisbon. Along the way, you’ll partake in a Galician cooking class, sample pastries and port wine, visit the terraced wineries of the Douro Valley, stay on a farm in the Alentejo, and sample arguably the best egg custard tarts in the country.

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Dining at Spain’s Michelin-starred temples to gastronomy should be on any serious foodie's bucket list, and Zicasso’s Once in a Lifetime Food & Wine Tour of Spain: 17 Michelin Stars in Two Weeks allows you to do just that. The journey kicks off in Barcelona, where you’ll dine at not one but three three-Michelin-starred restaurants (including the legendary El Celler de Can Roca) before embarking on a train trip through rolling vineyards to Valencia—the home of Spanish paella. The tour continues south to Sevilla—the heart of Andalucía and the “land of liquid gold,” as olive oil is dubbed there—and ends in Madrid at three-starred DiverXO, led by pioneering young local chef David Muñoz.

Attention, chocoholics: your dream trip awaits on Alpenwild’s Tour de Chocolat, an indulgent (and scenic) six-day odyssey through the Alps that unveils the secrets of Swiss chocolate. Every day brings a new chocolate-themed experience, from creating your own truffles to learning tempering techniques, visiting the workshop of a top-tier chocolate artisan, exploring single-source chocolates, and tasting new flavor combinations. Of course, you can’t exclusively eat chocolate for a week, so the tour also covers general Swiss cuisine with a visit to Gruyère (home of the famous cheese), a truffle hunt in the Jura mountains, and a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

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Want to spend a day in the life of a Parisian Bobo (a.k.a. a bourgeois-bohemian)? Context Travel will pair you with a chef or food writer, who will lead you on a 2.5-hour tour through the traditional bakeries and cafés as well as organic markets and hip international bistros of the Haut Maraism (Paris’s trendy 3rd arrondissement). Along the way, you’ll stop at the Marché des Enfants Rouges—the oldest covered market in Paris—and pop into specialty shops to pick up snacks for a gourmet apéro (Bobo slang for an aperitif, or pre-dinner snack). Keep your eyes peeled for hip spots like famed Mexican restaurant Candelaria and Popelini, which is known for reinventing the traditional choux pastry.

Food tourism is one of the top reasons to visit Denmark, where the New Nordic food movement is all the rage. What better way to delve into Scandinavian cuisine than on a half-day walking tour through Copenhagen? Foodtours.eu will shed light on Danish history through the lens of food, with plenty of samples along the way. You’ll start at the new covered market Torvehallerne (where Noma alum Rosio Sanchez opened her popular taco stand Hija de Sanchez) and sample preserves, caramels, liquorice, and artisanal cheese developed by Michelin-starred chefs. Of course, a food tour of Copenhagen wouldn’t be complete without sampling smørrebrød—famous open-faced sandwiches piled high with fish, veggies, and other toppings—so be sure to leave some room.