Food Tours · Tour

Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill Food Walk with Chocolate Finish

Brooklyn read through its shopkeepers rather than its landmarks. Three hours on foot, about four kilometres at a walking-and-talking pace, through three neighbourhoods that have kept their independent food businesses while much of the city lost them. Smith Street comes first, in Carroll Gardens, one of the more serious restaurant strips in the borough, though the stops here are the small family places rather than the tables people book weeks ahead. The guide covers where the neighbourhood name came from, its Italian and Irish history, and what the waterfront did to it. Pastries along the way. Cobble Hill is next: brownstones, residential streets, parks, and more independent shops. Then the southern edge of Brooklyn Heights along Atlantic Avenue, where the stop is one of the Middle Eastern bakeries that have been there for decades. It ends on Court Street with chocolate made on the premises. The food adds up to a full meal, across New American, Italian and Middle Eastern, and you meet the people who make it and hear how their businesses have gone. Twelve people at most, guided in English, and the whole route is wheelchair accessible. Under-fours free, reduced rate from four to eleven. Most dietary requirements can be worked around with a day's notice, though several stops share kitchens and cross-contamination is possible.