Food Tours · Tour

Faicco's Arancini, Mamoun's Falafel, Thirty Sauces of Fries

Six tastings, twelve guests, three hours, and a guide who lives in the neighbourhood. It starts and finishes at the same cupcake counter on Bleecker Street, a shop fitted out like a retro classroom with desks and lunchboxes, where you build your own combination of cake and frosting at the end. The eating runs down Bleecker and MacDougal. At Faicco's, an Italian salumeria that has been on Bleecker for over a century, you get arancini and sopressata. Taco Mahal on Seventh Avenue South serves tacos on naan or roti, curries and Mexican technique together, from a founder who grew up with both. Nonna Maria pizza comes next, with beer and wine available to buy. Mamoun's on MacDougal has been frying falafel since 1971, which makes it the oldest Middle Eastern restaurant in New York. Pommes Frites does Belgian fries, double-cooked, with more than thirty sauces to choose between, and the group stays long enough to finish a drink there. Between the stops the route covers what makes the Village the Village. 75½ Bedford Street is nine and a half feet wide, the narrowest house in New York, and Edna St. Vincent Millay lived in it. Cherry Lane Theatre, founded on a hidden street in 1924, is where off-Broadway began. Grove Court is six brick houses from the 1850s around a private courtyard you would never see without being shown the gate. The oldest wooden house left in the Village stands nearby, a survivor of the fire codes that ended timber construction in Manhattan. You pass the Stonewall Inn and its commemorative statue, Father Demo Square and the church that served the Italian families who built these blocks, the Friends corner at Bedford and Grove, Cornelia Street, Café Wha? where Dylan played his first New York night and Hendrix played later, and the Comedy Cellar next door. The Hangman's Elm in Washington Square is roughly three and a half centuries old, the oldest living thing in Manhattan, and the story behind its name is one historians cannot confirm and locals will not drop. Stanford White's marble arch marks a century since Washington's inauguration, and almost nobody photographing it knows that. Wheelchair accessible throughout, including the transport. Rain or shine. Vegetarian options and dietary needs can be handled if you tell the guide when you meet. Water included; beer and wine are for purchase at two stops.