10 Best Food Tours of La Spezia

Before participating in any tourist activity it is important to know the details that define it, so you have the opportunity to make the most of the experience by understanding exactly what you are investing your money and time in. This applies when you want to participate in the best gastronomic tours in La Spezia, as this is one of the best activities you could enjoy in your short or long visit to this town in the Liguria region.

So to facilitate your decision making in this publication I explain all the aspects you need to know about these culinary tours. This will allow you to include this plan in your tourist itinerary without affecting the time you will have available to enjoy the other important attractions that are part of the best things to do in La Spezia.

The best option

La Spezia Food Tour

The best gastronomic tour of La Spezia

Enjoy the best gastronomic tour in La Spezia Cinque Terre tasting some of the most traditional dishes, while touring the city.

From $94 at Hellotickets

Recommended if you are interested in the idea of enjoying the characteristic flavors of this city with the accompaniment of a guide who specializes in its history and culture. It is also advisable for those who will be staying in La Spezia and need entertainment plans that also take place in the city center.

It is an activity suitable for the whole family as well as for people with reduced mobility. The duration is favorable for those who do not wish to spend many hours walking around the city and the amount of food is significantly abundant at each of the tour stops.

The first thing you need to know about the gastronomic tours of La Spezia is that these are distinguished because they focus mainly on showing their participants which are the most representative dishes of the local culinary world and which are the restaurants that remain most faithful to the identity of this Italian region.

The duration of this type of tours is usually about three to four hours at the most. However, the approach maintained in the tour can be very different. Sometimes it is a tour that will only take place in the historic center of the city for a small group of people who will be accompanied by a local guide who, through fraternal and close conversations, tells the history and the most relevant curiosities of each of the recipes they try.

Other times the approach is usually a little more exclusive, because in those cases it would be a tour organized by an expert in gastronomy that focuses much more on the technical aspects of each of the restaurants that will be visited. Either way, in both alternatives you will get to know the most representative establishments and taste the most important dishes of the city.

You should also keep in mind that this type of tours are completely on foot and that there is usually a very specific meeting point in the center of the city, which means that they almost never include a direct transfer from your accommodation to this place. In addition, it is an experience recommended for the whole family and there are different schedules available throughout the day.

There are different ways to book a gastronomic tour of La Spezia and it all depends on what you consider most favorable for your comfort. The first and the most recommended of all will always be an online booking of the service. And this has to do with the fact that you can read the references that other people make after having lived that tourist experience and, at the same time, you can pay for it with your credit card from the comfort of your home.

In that mode of purchase it is also common to be offered a free cancellation of the service if you notify it well in advance and you can also directly compare the different offers that exist for the same particular event. In fact, an online booking is just as advisable for other tourist activities such as the purchase of tickets to enter the naval technical museum of La Spezia.

The other option that is also available to you is to buy the activity directly from one of the tourist agencies located in the city center. However, this is a much more inconvenient decision because there is no guarantee that the price will be competitive, let alone that you will find enough vacancies for the date and time of your interest.

The duration of the gastronomic tours in La Spezia is as varied as the dishes that can be included in the menu organized by the guide. On some occasions the culinary tours can last for 3 hours while on other dates the itinerary is completed after 2 hours and a half and therefore the participants would be free to do whatever they want with the rest of their time.

This variation in the times of the gastronomic tours of La Spezia has to do with the same tourist influx that may be at the time of your visit. If it is the summer, then most restaurants are crow ded and waiting times can increase. Even within a gastronomic tour that usually takes precedence in terms of attention from the kitchen and with the speed in which the ordered dishes are delivered.

Either way, these gastronomic tours can be organized either in the early evening or early afternoon. Which means they can be an alternative to dinner or lunch and, as such, you can set up your day to take part in some of the best single day excursions from La Spezia. This is knowing that by five o'clock in the afternoon you will be back in the city and can enjoy these tours to appease the appetite you have built up throughout your sightseeing tour.

The things you will see on a gastronomic tour in La Spezia have everything to do with the culinary identity of the city, as well as the culture that shapes it. The gastronomy of a place has a lot to do with the lifestyle of its inhabitants and, therefore, in this type of tour you have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the daily reality of this place through the flavors that distinguish it.

As for the areas you will visit in the city, you should know that the tour usually takes place around the Giardini Pubblici. This is because this public park is the heart of the city center and its surroundings are full of restaurants and stores that make up the commercial district of this relatively small town.

Anyway, the gastronomic tours are part of the best tours of La Spezia due to the fact that along the way you will walk through its most important streets. These differ from other Italian cities in that many of the city's buildings are at most 100 years old.

In addition, the atmosphere of the restaurants you will visit is very varied, as La Spezia is characterized by a culinary industry that combines the best of local agriculture with the strong relationship that exists today with fishing along the Ligurian coast.

There are several tips you should keep in mind if you want to participate in a gastronomic tour in this city. Although this is one of the best things to do in La Spezia, it is true that the experience can be lived in a more favorable way if you make the right choices.

Choose the evening hours

If you have the possibility to choose a gastronomic tour that takes place after six in the evening, then it is preferable that you take that alternative. And the fact is that midday tours are usually much more uncomfortable because of the high or low temperatures that can be felt in this city both in winter and summer. Also because of the possibility that the atmosphere in the restaurants may not be at its best.

Similarly, the midday alternative is perfect for those who find this schedule more practical and is even more recommended for those who intend to make an excursion in Cinque Terre during the sunset. In this case, you need to have enough energy to enjoy this other tourist experience to the fullest.

Go with enough appetite

The other recommendation I can make to you when you wish to participate in the gastronomic tours in La Spezia is to go to this culinary event with enough appetite. This is because it is not a walk where you will have small tastings at each of the stops. At all of them you will directly enjoy a dish with full portions, which means that at the end of the tour you will have eaten double or triple what you would eat on a conventional night.

Dare to try different things

The best thing you can do to make your participation in La Spezia food tours a success is to be willing to try different things. This is because it is likely that some dishes may seem peculiar to you, either because of the ingredients they contain or because of their presentation. But the important thing is that you trust the experts, because Italian gastronomy is one of the best in the world.

Squid, fish and octopus are added to other ingredients such as the traditional tomato, the representative basil and the consistent pasta to create some of the dishes that you can enjoy on this tour.

A gastronomic tour is a considerable financial investment. Most of them are usually priced around 90 euros per person and this is a rate that may seem alarming to some tourists. However, there are specific factors that you should take into account.

The first of all is that it is a tour that offers you the opportunity to visit the best restaurants in the city on the same date and knowing that you will taste the most representative dishes of each of them. This ultimately ends up being a logistical convenience, as you avoid waiting times in each of these places and also saves you the possibility of making a mistake when ordering your dinner.

The amount of food you will have available throughout the evening is also important. Regardless of whether it is a midday or evening tour, it is still common for each participant to have 4 or 5 main courses at their disposal with the accompaniment of local wines and even some desserts. So if we do the sum, you can see that visiting about five different restaurants ordering a dish in each of them the final expenses would be pretty close to what the tour costs.

Now, taking a gastronomic tour of La Spezia is recommended because all Italian towns have a culinary identity that is rooted in their history and the culture that has developed over the years.

This means that the way of making the most representative dishes of northern Italian gastronomy in this city is very different from the method you would find in Genoa or Pisa. Which are two cities quite close to this bay.

Moreover, La Spezia distinguishes itself culinarily for the excellent combination it has of the flavors that come directly from the agricultural production of the region with the marine flavors that are obtained through fishing, which has become the most distinctive factor of the economy of this part of Liguria, at least if you do not take tourism into account.

At the same time, you should keep in mind that the city of La Spezia is a relatively small tourist destination that is actually on the map of places to visit in northern Italy because of its proximity to the Cinque Terre National Park. So if you are making a 48 or 72 hour visit to this city, then a gastronomic tour is an excellent way to fill your time while experiencing its culinary identity in the best possible way.

One of the first advantages of taking a guided gastronomic tour when deciding to visit some restaurants on your own is the economic savings. The fact is that within a culinary tour preferential rates are offered so that the price paid by the participant is competitive if he/she decides to compare it with what he/she would spend eating the same in each of these places outside the tourist itinerary.

Another great advantage is the fact that a guided tour offers you the possibility to learn all the important details about the culinary world of this place, as well as the events that have marked the culture of this place. You will discover very entertaining stories told directly by an expert in the past of this locality. In addition, you will learn more about the identity that has marked its present.

Definitely, this is something that you do not experience when you visit a restaurant on your own, because in that case you do not have the accompaniment of a guide who is 100% focused on giving you a memorable experience. This is so that at the end of the tour you have as much knowledge as possible about the local gastronomy and culture of the city.

In addition, a guided tour is an excellent way to guarantee the possibility of visiting the best restaurants without having to deal with a reservation on your own, which can be quite complicated during the busiest tourist seasons in the city.