10 Best Food Tours of La Spezia

Before participating in any tourist activity it is important to know the details that define it, so that you have the opportunity to get the most out 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 on your short or long visit to this town in the Liguria region.

So to facilitate your decision making, in this post I will 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 you walk around the city.

From £76 at Hellotickets

Recommended if you are interested in the idea of enjoying the characteristic flavours of this city with the accompaniment of a guide who specialises 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 centre.

It is an activity suitable for the whole family as well as for people with reduced mobility. The duration is favourable 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 stops along the route.

The first thing you need to know about the gastronomic tours of La Spezia is that they 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 focus of the tour can be very different. Sometimes it is a tour that only takes place in the historic centre 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.

On other occasions the approach is usually a little more exclusive, as in these cases it is a tour organised by an expert in gastronomy who 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 bear in mind that this type of tour is completely on foot and that there is usually a very specific meeting point in the city centre, which means that they almost never include a direct transfer from your accommodation to this place. It is also a family-friendly experience and there are different times 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 favourable for your comfort. The first and 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 available to you is to buy the activity directly from one of the tourist agencies located in the city centre. 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 La Spezia food tours is as varied as the dishes that can be included in the menu organised by the guide. On some occasions the culinary tours can last for 3 hours while on other dates the itinerary is completed in 2.5 hours and participants are free to do whatever they want with the rest of their time.

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

Either way, these gastronomic tours can be organised either in the early evening or early afternoon. This means that 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 day trips from La Spezia. Knowing that you'll be back in town by 5pm, you'll be able to enjoy these tours to appease the appetite you've built up over the course of your sightseeing.

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, for this reason, in this type of tour you have the opportunity to familiarise yourself with the daily reality of this place through the flavours 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 centre and its surroundings are full of restaurants and shops that make up the commercial district of this relatively small town.

In any case, 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 are different from other Italian cities in that many of the buildings in the city are at most 100 years old.

In addition, the atmosphere of the restaurants you will visit is very varied, as La Spezia is characterised 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 to keep in mind if you want to take part in a food tour in La Spezia. Although this is one of the best things to do in La Spezia, it is still true that the experience can be made more enjoyable 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 o'clock in the evening, then it is preferable to take that alternative. The midday tours tend to be much more uncomfortable because of the high or low temperatures that can be felt in this city in both winter and summer. Also because of the possibility that the atmosphere in the restaurants may not be at its best.

Likewise, the midday alternative is perfect for those who find this timetable more practical and it is even more recommendable for those who intend to make an excursion in Cinque Terre during the sunset. In that case, you need to have enough energy to make the most of this other tourist experience.

Go with enough appetite

The other recommendation I can give you when you want 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 enjoy a full portioned meal, which means that by the end of the tour you will have eaten double or triple what you would eat on a conventional evening.

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 to trust the experts, as Italian cuisine is one of the best on the planet.

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

A gastronomic tour is a considerable financial investment. Most of them tend to be priced at 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 bear in mind.

The first of these is that it is a tour that offers you the opportunity to visit the best restaurants in the city on the same date and in the knowledge that you will try the most representative dishes from each one of them. This ultimately ends up being a logistical convenience, as you avoid waiting times at each of these places and also save yourself 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 available to them, accompanied by local wines and even some desserts. So if you add it up, you can see that visiting about five different restaurants and ordering one dish in each of them would be pretty close to the cost of the tour.

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 their inhabitants have 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 of the flavours that come directly from the agricultural production of the region with the marine flavours obtained through fishing, which has become the most distinctive factor of the economy of this part of Liguria, at least if you don't take tourism into account.

At the same time, it should be noted that the town 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 food tour is a great way to fill your time while experiencing its culinary identity in the best possible way.

One of the first advantages of taking a guided culinary tour when deciding to visit some restaurants on your own is the financial savings. A culinary tour offers preferential rates so that the price you pay is competitive compared to what you would spend eating at 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 entertaining stories told directly by an expert on the town's past. 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, since 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 by the end of the tour you have as much knowledge as possible about the local cuisine and culture of the city.

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