Name: Secret Food Tours Raleigh
Address: Raleigh

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Raleigh Food Tours - Secret Food Tours

Raleigh Food Tour

<p>Raleigh sits on a line few people notice. Travel west and the barbecue sauce turns red with tomato. Stay here, or go east, and it stays thin and sharp, vinegar and black pepper poured over hog cooked all night.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The city grew around its oaks, and the food grew around each wave of arrivals. Eastern North Carolina farmers hauled produce, poultry and flowers to a market house on Moore Square from 1914. Lebanese families have been baking and cooking here since the 1970s. Wake County now holds the second largest Latino population in the state. Sweet potatoes have come out of these counties since 1971, the year North Carolina took first place nationally and kept it.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Our Raleigh food tours are led by guides who live here. A Raleigh food tour with us covers five tastings on foot, one of them a secret dish we reveal on the day.&nbsp;</p>

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Raleigh

Secret Food Tours: Raleigh

Raleigh Culinary Experiences

Secret Food Tours Raleigh

Secret Food Tours

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<div class=""><div class="relative card-elevated p-5"><div class="markdown-body text-sm"><div class=""><div class="relative card-elevated p-5"><div class="markdown-body text-sm"><p>Five hand-picked stops between Moore Square and the Warehouse District, from Cantonese barbecue buns to eastern Carolina chopped pork, plus one secret dish we reveal only on the day.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div>

Five hand-picked stops between Moore Square and the Warehouse District, from Cantonese barbecue buns to eastern Carolina chopped pork, plus one secret dish we reveal only on the day.

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What is a

<p>Your guide will meet you at Moore Square across from Market Hall at 209 E Martin St, Raleigh, NC 27601.<strong> </strong>If you have any questions. Please <a href="mailto:contact@secrettours.com">email us</a>.</p>

<p>If a tour is fully booked, please email us about <a href="/private-bookings">Group &amp; Private Tours</a> options.</p>

Meeting Spot

<p style="margin-left:0px;">Downtown Raleigh is smaller than you would think, and better fed. Our Raleigh culinary tour walks you from Moore Square, one of two four-acre public squares surviving from the city's 1792 plan, west across the old commercial grid and into the Warehouse District, where red brick buildings once held freight, tobacco, and railway offices. The whole route sits under oaks and takes about three hours on foot.</p><p><br>Five stops, and no two belong to the same tradition. You start with a steamed Cantonese barbecue pork bun in a room part brewery, part bookshop, part flower stall. You work through a Lebanese spread built on family recipes carried over a century ago, hummus and baba ghanouj and shawarma and fried kibbee. You eat whole-hog barbecue chopped fine and sharpened with vinegar, the way eastern North Carolina has done it for three centuries. You finish over three bars of chocolate made from the bean in a converted railway depot. Somewhere in the middle, we hand you our secret dish, which stays secret until the day.</p><p><br>Your guide lives here. They will tell you why the barbecue argument between eastern and western North Carolina still gets heated, what East Hargett Street meant to Black Raleigh in the 1920s, and which of these kitchens they take their own family to. Groups stay small, no more than fourteen guests, so there is room to ask.</p><div class=""><div class="relative card-elevated p-5"><div class="markdown-body text-sm"><p style="margin-left:0px;"><br>You leave full, and you leave with a downtown you know how to walk. Most guests go back to at least one of these stops before they head home.</p></div></div></div>

What you'll do

Due to the nature of creating a well balanced and thoughtful gastronomy experience, many of our tours are unable to accommodate certain dietary restrictions. Please <a href="mailto:paris@secrettours.com">contact us</a> prior to booking your tour to see if we are able to accommodate your dietary needs.

What You'll Taste

<p style="margin-left:0px;">Two districts, one walk, and a lot of Raleigh between them.</p><p><br>Moore Square has been a gathering place since 1792, when a surveyor laid out the new state capital on a grid borrowed from Philadelphia. Five public squares were drawn. Two survive. In 1914 the city built its Mission-style market house on the square's southern edge, farmers moved in, and by the 1920s East Hargett Street along the northern edge had become Black Main Street, home to more Black-owned businesses than anywhere else in the city.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Walk west and the mood shifts. The Warehouse District grew up around the rail lines, six blocks of red brick built for freight rather than shoppers. Those buildings now hold a chocolate factory, a pit room, an art museum, and a food hall. Both halves of downtown Raleigh feed people well. Neither does it the same way.</p>

Why Raleigh?

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Downtown Raleigh is smaller than you would think, and better fed. Our Raleigh culinary tour walks you from Moore Square, one of two four-acre public squares surviving from the city's 1792 plan, west across the old commercial grid and into the Warehouse District, where red brick buildings once held freight, tobacco, and railway offices. The whole route sits under oaks and takes about three hours on foot.Five stops, and no two belong to the same tradition. You start with a steamed Cantonese barbecue pork bun in a room part brewery, part bookshop, part flower stall. You work through a Lebanese spread built on family recipes carried over a century ago, hummus and baba ghanouj and shawarma and fried kibbee. You eat whole-hog barbecue chopped fine and sharpened with vinegar, the way eastern North Carolina has done it for three centuries. You finish over three bars of chocolate made from the bean in a converted railway depot. Somewhere in the middle, we hand you our secret dish, which stays secret until the day.Your guide lives here. They will tell you why the barbecue argument between eastern and western North Carolina still gets heated, what East Hargett Street meant to Black Raleigh in the 1920s, and which of these kitchens they take their own family to. Groups stay small, no more than fourteen guests, so there is room to ask.You leave full, and you leave with a downtown you know how to walk. Most guests go back to at least one of these stops before they head home.

<div class=""><div class="relative card-elevated p-5"><div class="markdown-body text-sm"><div class=""><div class="relative card-elevated p-5"><div class="markdown-body text-sm"><p>Upgrade your Raleigh Food Tour experience with two curated drink selections chosen to pair with the food you’ll be served. You must be 18 or older and have a valid ID.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div>

Upgrade your Raleigh Food Tour experience with two curated drink selections chosen to pair with the food you’ll be served. You must be 18 or older and have a valid ID.

Upgraded Drinks Package in Raleigh

<p style="margin-left:0px;">Upgrade your Raleigh Food Tour experience with two drink selections chosen to pair with the food. You must be 21 or older and have a valid ID.</p><p style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</p><p style="margin-left:0px;">The first is a seasonal beer at our opening stop, poured by the brewery in the same room where you eat the dim sum. The house style leans Belgian and deliberately restrained, so the beer sits alongside a steamed pork bun rather than flattening it.</p><p style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</p><p style="margin-left:0px;">The second is a seasonal cocktail at the barbecue stop. Vinegar-sharpened whole-hog pork wants something with a bit of structure next to it, and a seasonal pour built around what is good locally right now does the job better than a fixed list would.</p>

Raleigh Food Tour

Raleigh Food Tours - Secret Food Tours

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