Food Tours · Tour

Doyers Street, an Audrey Hepburn Mural, and Seven Tastings

Two hours, seven tastings, meeting outside a dumpling shop on Mulberry Street. You start with pan-fried pork and chive dumplings and the guide explains how they are made while you eat them. Mosco Street comes next, a short block with Chinese street art and, as it happens, one of the better angles in the neighbourhood for photographing One World Trade Center. Mei Lai Wah on Mott has been open for close to sixty years and is known for its char siu bao, sweet roast pork inside a steamed bun. Then Doyers Street, the only bent street in the grid down here and known for a century as the Bloody Angle, because the curve made it useful for ambushes when the tongs were fighting over the neighbourhood in the early 1900s. It is entirely calm now. Hong Kong style sponge cake and homemade sweet Thai tea come at a café on Baxter. Crossing into Little Italy you pass the welcome sign, where the Empire State Building lines up in the background, and stop at a family pasta shop on Grand that has been rolling ravioli for more than a hundred years, for gnocchi with marinara. On Mulberry there is a bar you will half-recognise, used in The Sopranos, Goodfellas and The Irishman, and next to it a large mural of Audrey Hepburn. Pizza is a thin, crisp cheese slice at a Nolita counter, and the walk finishes at a bakery on Cleveland Place that has been making cheesecake for over fifty years, where you choose between a slice of it and a cannoli. Up to fifteen travellers, in English, water included. Not suitable for vegan or gluten-free diets, or for anyone with a nut allergy.