At the Chef’s Table Tour
Greenville, South Carolina
A few years after John Nolan began running history tours in Greenville, he sampled a food tour in New York City and knew the format would be a great fit for Greenville. After talking with local restaurateurs, he created his behind-the-scenes tour, At the Chef’s Table, to “focus on meeting the chefs and having guests interact with them and learn from them.”
When you take your group on an At the Chef’s Table tour, it’s best to eschew snacking in advance and big meals later in the day. “They’re very generous with portions,” said Nolan. “The first four restaurants are usually like a small entree, half size or appetizer size, but some people give us entrees.”
Participating restaurants share their proposed menus with Nolan the night before or the morning of the tour, and he balances them to make sure there are no repeats. A sample tour might include steak, trout, lamb and chicken tacos, followed by dessert.
The five-stop, three-hour tour works well with about 20 people, but Nolan can also easily accommodate 50-person groups with a three-restaurant format capped off by a distillery visit. For groups of up to 15, he also offers barbecue driving tours.
www.greenvillehistorytours.com
Charleston Culinary Tours
Charleston, South Carolina
In 2008, before food tours were standard fare, Giada de Laurentis joined John LaVerne on one of his Charleston history tours. He couldn’t stop peppering her with food questions, so she suggested he look into offering a culinary tour of Charleston, and things quickly moved full steam ahead from there.
“I know it was something that made sense for Charleston,” he said. “Our cuisine is unique and our culinary scene has been really impacted by what’s happened in the last 350 years. You can go to other cities and have a taste of everything, but on our tours the focus is on low country cuisine.”
LaVerne typically begins with an orientation to Charleston’s history through the lens of low country cuisine over pastries and coffee in the morning, or a light appetizer and sweet tea in the afternoon, followed by four or five stops featuring local favorites like barbecue, pralines and Carolina gold rice.
On Friday mornings, LaVerne also runs a behind-the-scenes chef’s kitchen tour during which top chefs, including James Beard Award winners, talk about their ingredients and cooking philosophies and show participants around their kitchens.
www.charlestonculinarytours.com
