Nice Guy Tours, a New York City walking food tour company operating since 2014, has launched a new Chinatown and Little Italy Food Tour, a three-hour guided walk through three neighborhoods that sit within a few blocks of each other in Lower Manhattan. The tour includes a minimum of seven tastings at independent, family-owned shops and runs Tuesdays and Fridays at 11 a.m. and Saturdays at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
The route begins east of the Bowery in the section of Chinatown known as Little Fuzhou, a more recent immigrant community than the historic blocks around Mott, Bayard and Pell Streets, where Chinese settlement in the city took hold in the 1870s. Guests then cross Canal Street into Little Italy, which has narrowed over the decades to a handful of long-running family businesses, and finish in Nolita on Mulberry Street. The full walk covers less than one mile of flat terrain.
Stops on the tour reflect several generations of neighborhood history. Mei Lai Wah, a Taishanese bakery serving Chinatown since 1968, closed in 2008 and reopened three months later; an oral history of its founders is held by the Museum of Chinese in America. Kam Hing Coffee Shop has operated on Baxter Street since 1984. Piemonte Ravioli makes fresh pasta daily on the ground floor of an 1833 Federal-style house that New York City designated an individual landmark in 2010, and the Bertorelli family has run the shop for roughly seventy years. Other stops include Shu Jiao Fu Zhou on Grand Street, North Dumpling, Nolita Pizza on Kenmare Street, and Figo Il Italiano on Mulberry Street, where the tour closes with Sicilian cannoli.
Along the way, guides point out landmarks including the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, the sharp curve of Doyers Street, and the domed Old Police Headquarters building in Nolita. The tour is designed to show guests where each neighborhood begins and ends, a boundary most visitors walk across without noticing.
“People have walked through Chinatown and Little Italy a hundred times and never realized they were crossing three neighborhoods with three completely different stories,” said Dante Mercadante, Founder of Nice Guy Tours. “Every stop on this route is a family that has held onto its storefront through decades of change. Eating there is the best way to understand how this part of the city was built.”
The Chinatown and Little Italy Food Tour is the fourth public tour offered by Nice Guy Tours, joining its Greenwich Village, Lower East Side and Astoria, Queens routes. Groups are limited to 12 guests. The tour is family friendly and vegetarian options are available. Tickets are $94 per person.
Nice Guy Tours has earned more than 3,000 five-star reviews on Google and Tripadvisor and has been featured by FOX 5 New York, the Huffington Post and Westchester Magazine, among others.
Reservations for the Chinatown and Little Italy Food Tour are available at https://niceguytours.com/nyc-food-tours/chinatown-little-italy-food-tour/