On a recent anniversary trip to Asheville, my husband and I enjoyed Eating Asheville's historical…read moredowntown food tour. We decided to splurge for The High Roller option as it was only around $10 more a person and included beverage parings with the food. Included is up to 6 stops at restaurants, bars, or desserteries with at-least 3 alcoholic beverages pairings and then other non-alcoholic options. The tour lasts about 2.5- 3 hours. This is a walking in food tour, so you have to be able and willing to travel on foot some. It wasn't a ton of walking, but did work up a little sweat as it was a warmer Friday afternoon (this tour is offered Thursday- Sunday). We had a small group of 6 people plus our tour guide. She was very sweet and personable. I think she may have been semi new at this as her story flow was a little jumbled, but it didn't bother me too much as honestly she was trying and I was interested in food way more than history. She did point out some important sites along the way and give us some fun Asheville facts. Great thing about these tours is they do vary. While the company has a number of places they work with which ones are selected for you, depends on the day, time, season etc. So you could honestly do these tours more than once and experience new things still. Our tour began at Asheville Charcuterie where we each enjoyed a personalized board of meat, cheese, cracker, fruit, and a local spicy honey. It was also served with a Bold Rock cider. This was a cute shop where you can get a drink or snack there or take items with you to go. Next was to the Grove Arcade where we hit Bebettes, a New Orleans coffeehouse with fresh out the oven beignets with a warm chocolate dipping sauce, served with a shot of coffee. So yummy. I felt bad about all the power sugar I got everywhere. Gotta love a dessert on stop 2! For the third s location was Strada Italiano. The food here was excellent. We sampled one of their arancini balls and a grilled Florentine ravioli. Both were delicious bites and executed flawlessly. Great Italian fare with some red wine. My husband and I agreed we want to come back here for a full Italian dinner experience on our next trip. Starting to feel a little full at this point, not gonna lie but things continued to get more hearty at The Rhu. We got to enjoy their house breakfast sausage and pimento cheese on a buttermilk biscuit. Thank goodness they only gave us half each as these bad boys were thick. All three components were so tasty, with the pimento cheese winning for me. It came with some iced tea, which was definitely southern and sweet. I knew we had one more food stop left before dessert. Imagine my surprise when it was an Indiana buffet at Mehfil. On the fifth stop? Lord, a bad day to wear jeans! They place was so generous giving us a like private mini buffet of items like tandoori chicken, saag paneer, naan, butter chicken, rice and more. I truly wish I had room to eat more as everything was so tasty, especially their tandoori chicken. Also they had the best beverage pairing with a pear mule cocktail - perfectly light and smooth for a warm day. Our tour guide joked that we would need to cancel our dinner reservations, turns out they weren't kidding. The last stop was Asheville Chocolate. So many amazing sweet treats you could enjoy at this place. We wrapped up our tour with a chocolate truffle and cookies and cream gelato. I had to ask my husband to help finish these as I was stuffed. Before departing, we tipped our guide. This is not required, but we were happy to do so as she worked hard and took great care of us. After the tour, not gonna lie went back to our hotel and had an amazing nap! Sign of a good food tour! I thought this food tour was a great deal for the $90 per person price. I know at first it sounds like a lot. But we more than got $15 worth at each place from the food and drink itself, plus to convenience of being able to just walk in to a reserved table at a popular restaurant with a planned bite ready in a few minutes. Not to mention, having a personal tour guide to take you around and teach you about where you are, what you are eating , and Asheville in general. If you like to eat, and can eat a lot (you will be very full but it's worth it), take this tour. It was a great way to get a taste of places you've never been and decide where you wanna go back to and try a full meal next time!

Did we have a good time overall? Yes. However, do I think…read moreit's worth the $92/person price tag all in with taxes and fees... to sample 5 places with varying portions of food and drink? Not quite. The classic before fees is $79/person. It offers "minimum of 5 stops and at least 2 drink pairings" from their website. Don't get me started on the 15.5% extra they tack on for "taxes and fees". If the unavoidable city tax for Asheville is 7%, the remainder is 8.5% for what? Their website/payment services? To be fair, the pricing is similar to one we took part in NOLA $78/person with Destination Kitchen but the food and portions were more balanced (albeit without drink pairings). For $10 more base price, you can book the high roller tour $89/person. After all is said and done I'm wondering if we should have spent the extra amount and upgraded to the high roller since the descriptor highlights "most elegant, trendy, and acclaimed" options. I understand the business also needs to make a profit along with giving a cut to the tour guides. At the beginning and throughout the tour, the guide continued to emphasize that if we were still hungry by the end that they have not done their jobs. However, there's more to consider. I'll go through the 5 places we tried and how one of the newest additions isn't even listed still on their website so if you were to look ahead of time for the offerings you would not expect it! We met our group inside the Grove Street Arcade on a Monday in September which is a great spot with some shops and public restrooms before we started. STOP 1 - The Rhu https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-rhu-asheville This is the cafe/breakfast bakery sister to Rhubarb, which is more upscale. They prepared a small cup of iced sweet tea with half of their breakfast sandwich. The refreshing tea with sugar cubes paired nicely with the buttery biscuit sandwich. Value: $8.50 for full sandwich and drink was not listed so going to estimate total is worth one sandwich. STOP 3 - Bold Rock https://www.yelp.com/biz/bold-rock-asheville-asheville The Cidery story actually started in VA but I'm glad they expanded to NC. We sampled a 6~7 oz cider paired with a Bruschetta and Bacon Apple Grilled Cheese. (American, cheddar, goat cheese, local apples, bacon, Dijon aioli, sourdough) It was super tasty and really enjoyed everything!! Value: ~$5 half pour, ~$10 for the food so one of the better values STOP 3 - Mëhfil https://www.yelp.com/biz/mehfil-asheville-2 Full buffet spread of ~6 Indian dishes with Mango Lassi and a tasty alcoholic beverage too! Now this place is the spot I mentioned isn't even listed with their logo on the restaurant page... I checked their Instagram which isn't updated frequently either and they announced just the day before our tour so this is brand NEW. Unfortunately this is one of the cuisines my SO does not eat. We would not have known that reserving in advance... which is a shame. Value: ~$25-30 honestly since they were offering generous full size portions of their dishes that you could serve yourself, this was hands down the best cost wise. If you were to fill up it would be at this stop. The staff were also super nice and hospitable! STOP 4 - Manicomio Pizza https://www.yelp.com/biz/manicomio-pizza-asheville Plain and simple pizzeria with some funky designs. We sampled a single slice which may have been their special of the day with cherry tomato and artichoke and a lemon wedge to spritz. It tasted good, but forgettable. They just gave us water. Value: $5.50 by the slice for daily special STOP 5 FINAL - Sunshine Sammies https://www.yelp.com/biz/sunshine-sammies-asheville Makes sense we'd end on dessert and we sampled 1/2 a sandwich of I believe their seasonal pumpkin! It was a sweet way to conclude the tour. Value: $4, a full size seasonal flavor is $8 I was full from the generous spread offered at Mëhfil which carried the food and drink side of the tour. Unfortunately my SO didn't get to fully enjoy the experience, and there was no way we could have expected they'd take us to the new restaurant that was just announced. Even being generous with some of my estimates, I landed at value of ~$60, which is still short of the cost you're paying especially when more than half of these locations are more fast casual spots. The most disappointing was the pizzeria, since aside from the artwork I didn't feel anything unique about the taste and seems like a wasted opportunity given the list of other more interesting restaurants. I enjoyed the historical information the guide sprinkled throughout along with background about each of the locations. Next time I'll keep in mind for Mondays where many restaurants aren't open.

Geoff is quite possibly the best tour guide on Ashville. We had no idea what to expect, but Groovy…read moreAshville over delivered. What a great way to see the city. Wow! Seriously...been on tours all over the country. This. One was incredibly unique!! #74 VW BUS!!!!!

Such a great and personable experience! We got a great tour of the downtown area and so much more!…read moreHe gave us so much insight into the Asheville experience! I have made a short visit before, but after this tour I realized I was missing out on all of the culture that Asheville offers! We had so much fun, with great music and great knowledgeable company! I highly recommend taking this tour if you want to see what Asheville has to offer and getting some history about how it got to where it is today! I can't say

Riding a Segway was a bucket list item for me. When I got to do it a few years ago I couldn't wait…read moreto share it with my family. We took a two hour tour today and it was great! Ben was a great teacher and had us all (Mom, two teens) riding in no time. We had a great tour and got to see notable landmarks. For me it was the ride and bonding with my younger son over the experience. We had a blast riding the Segways. I highly recommend, 10/10, would do it again!

Three of us took this Segway tour and it was a really fun, unique experience. The price with tax…read morewas right at $200 not including the tip. We had such a great time exploring the city of Asheville and playing tourist. None of us had ever been on a Segway and we were happy for the time spent to make sure we were comfortable before heading out on the tour. They have a limit of 6 people per tour so it's a nice group and you can hear everything the guides have to say. I would highly recommend this as a great place to start on your visit to Asheville. You get to know the city, get recommendations for what else to do and where to eat for the rest of your trip and it's just a really fun way to start off your vacation!

We took the brewery bus tour for a bachelor party and it was the best experience of our 5 day trip…read more Dave was our guide and we left every stop up to his decision. He didn't miss. Each brewery we went to was full of fun and different enough from the last that we were constantly entertained. Cannot recommend Dave enough, seriously. This tour is an amazing experience for any group looking to try some good beer and explore Asheville!

We took the morning Jeep Tour through the Blue Ridge mountains. The stops and the information was…read moregreat, and our guide had a great energy. The Jeep ride itself is kind of rough - we both left with small headaches.

We really enjoyed the brewery facility tour. Sarah did an awesome job sharing information about the…read moregrounds and the Burial company.

We had an awesome tour with Sarah then dinner. The brisket cheese steak was off the hook. From the…read moredry hopped Pilsner to the imperial stout the beer was great. I especially loved their hazy beers.

As a lover of old analog synthesizers I was in heaven at the Moog Music shop/factory. We stopped…read morein to take the factory tour, but unfortunately they were "short of staff" that day, but we were warmly greeted by a nice gentleman by the name of Jim. Jim let us enjoy the various synths on display and gave us a very detailed history of Bob Moog's inventiveness and creations. He demonstrated the large modular synth that was a duplicate model the Moog built and sold to Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer fame. Jim and his coworker were lamenting the fact that the modular was being shipped back to Gene Stopp's estate. Gene was Keith Emmerson's synth tech back in the day...interesting stuff! Also learned that Bob never patented anything; from the iconic "ladder filter" to the pitch and modulation wheels seen on nearly every keyboard synthesizer today. It was a fun discussion with Jim, and even my wife who is normally intimidated by musical instruments with lots of knobs and buttons enjoyed playing the synths on display! I own their FANTASTIC Sub37 and want more!!!! Thanks for the nice experience, Moog. I'm glad we could visit before the company production gets shipped off to China. I later learned about their layoffs and the plan to outsource production to Asia. Sad. Read more here: https://cdm.link/2023/09/moog-music-layoffs/

Awesome store, awesome tour. Learned so much from Paul about the history of the synthesizer and the…read moretheramin, and it was really cool to see how they were made and to try playing them. Would highly recommend coming here and doing the tour if in Asheville!

Wendy was able to put a fabulous trip together for my husband and me to France and Italy for a 3…read moreweek vacation. From the airfare leaving the States till we arrived home! Every detail was scheduled by Wendy flawlessly. We were picked up at the airport and train stations by drivers and delivered to our hotels. Our private guided tours were always on time and very educational and fun. Restaurant reservations were ready for us and the food was terrific! I highly recommend Bliss Travel and Wendy!

Went on a brew-Ed tour on our recent Asheville trip. Cliff…read moreprovided so much information. He even teaches brewing and the craft beer business at the local college. We went to 3 breweries and sampled 4 beers at each. It was nice to try beers I would never have ordered Cliff gives the history of beer around the world and in the US along with Asheville and some of the local breweries and brewers. This tour was a high point of our visit. Really helped us navigate the Asheville craft beer scene. Highly recommend and you can't go wrong with this tour!!

This tour was everything we hoped for and so much more. We had booked a private tour for our group,…read moreincluding our pup. The whole process, from booking through the tour was fantastic. The team was very accommodating, had great communication and got us set up for the exact date and time we had hoped for. On the day of our tour, we met our awesome guide, Michael, at the first brewery and the day began. Michael was a wealth of knowledge, not just about the beer industry itself, but the craft beer movement in Asheville, the history of Asheville, and so much more. At every brewery he took us to he really had the inside track, knew everyone there, and was able to give us the perfect blend of history, education and beverages. Since we had already been to one of our planned stops earlier in the week, Michael was quick on his feet to identify another venue that had a fantastic selection and location. One of my favorite parts of the tour was getting to experience certain types of beer that I would otherwise shy away from. At the start of our journey, Michael asked our group what we liked, what we didn't like and from there, he really expanded all of our pallets and showed us just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Asheville breweries have to offer. Even if you've been to every brewery, even if you're in Asheville expert, everyone can benefit from this tour, it was informative, entertaining and refreshing.