The American Table Culinary Tours offers three-day tours of gastronomic hotspots across the United States, plumbing the country’s kitchens, cafes and other eating places for remarkable food and unique cultural insight. Our mission is to celebrate our nation’s diverse vernacular foodways by facilitating meaningful experiences for curious eaters and to support the hard-working folks behind the counters and over the stoves who make them possible.
Our tours incorporate all that is weird and wonderful about American food, from family-run fish boils on the shores of Lake Michigan to firefighters’ chili cook-offs in shadeless south Texas. While our tours are delightfully excessive and mischievously fun, they’re also highly educational: A hallmark of The American Table is the roster of nationally esteemed writers, historians and scientists we call upon to help contextualize our adventures.
Our participants enroll in our tours seeking the odd, the offbeat and the authentic: They'd rather use a spork than silver. Some of the most popular stops on our recently completed Memphis itinerary included a hog processing plant, where tourgoers watched—in all its visceral glory—a pig's journey from pen to plate and a rural 'cue joint, where the pitmaster allowed our folks to dig their fingers deep into the shoulder of a just-cooked whole hog for an impromptu porcine anatomy lesson.
We’ve earned high marks from great eats scout Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Zingerman’s, and author John Shelton Reed, who has said of our tours: “You shouldn’t miss them.” Find out why at www.tabletours.com.
Culinary tours that explore regional culture & include hands-on workshops, commentaries, and visits to cooks, farms, restaurants, markets, fairs.
Number of Programs/Year
2-4
Program Length
3 days
Group Size or S:T Ratio
10:1
Program Focus
Culture/History/Heritage
Faculty
Hanna Raskin, tour leader, food editor & restaurant critic for Asheville's Mountain Xpress. Presenters include Bill McGraw, Curtis Granderson, David Wondrich, Mike Veach
Costs
$675 includes planned activities, local transportation.
