Grace Walden walking tour

Can anyone give me a recommendation on this tour? There is only one previous comment on here about it (very recently) which says it is very good. Sligtly dubious that there is not more comments if it is so good?! Perhaps it is a new thing?

graceannwalden.net/Gourmet_Walking_Tours_wit鈥?/a>

Grace Walden walking tour

Grace Ann was a restaurant critic for several years. She does seem to know her stuff. I believe that she is semi-retired now, doing these food tours. Can%26#39;t give you first person feedback, but she does know her way around the local dining world. You might check this site that has a first person account from 2000 (so it%26#39;s hardly new):

http://www.xoxtruffles.com/press/press13.htm

Grace Walden walking tour

I just took the Grace Ann Walden tour of North Beach. The tour had 21 people so it was difficult to get in small places without being in the way of customers. The tour took almost 6 hours including a late lunch at the Washington Square Grill. I feel we had a lot of ';down time'; at each stop along the way. The stops were Saints Paul and Peters Church for some Italian history, Liguria Bakery for (by the time we arrived) a cold sample of wonderful focaccia and tour of the kitchen as the store was closing, a walk by the Italian Lodge and a little history, Palermo Deli for 2 kinds of deli meat, Joe DiMaggio%26#39;s restaurant kitchen and closed restaurant, O%26#39;Reilly%26#39;s for some Guiness stout, The North Beach Museum, Victoria Pastry for 2 cookies, Little City Meats for some sausage, a pottery shop instead of the Shrine of St Francis at someone%26#39;s request, an Italian book store and the lunch at Washington Square Grill. Grace Ann was quite gregarious and we may have learned more about her than North Beach. So the bottom line is that the tour had too many participants, was unorganized, and could have been much shorter with more relevant information.

kasialouise: Thanks for weighing in on that. I%26#39;d wondered how the tour was. Grace Ann knows her stuff, but I know how it can be with minor ';personalities'; who can make it more about them than about the place or the information. She had a chatty restaurant column on insider stuff in the Chronicle for years and makes appearances on local TV and such.

I have been conducting my walking tour of North Beach for over 20 years. It was chosen by Gourmet magazine as one of the 100 best things about San Francisco.

Literally thousands have taken the tour. It has been featured on several TV shows, and in many guidebooks.

On my tour I tell the history of the Italian immigration in the 19th century, take folks to a unique museum and because I am a food writer (86 Recipes San Francisco, seven SF guidebooks and a food column in the SF Chronicle for 16 years) I like to turn people on to the unique tastes of North Beach: freshly made focaccia from 100-year-old bakery, arrancini from a Sicilian deli, housemade sausages from a 70-year-old butcher shop and two Italian cookies, ';ugly but good'; and ';bones of the dead.';

I feel it is totally unfair to post kasialouise comments prominently, when they are not factual. I remember her and that tour and she was grumpy from the get-go.

I respectfully ask that her comments be deleted OR that my description of what I do be posted. Thank you,

GraceAnn Walden

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