Pittsburgh Food Crawls PDF Download

"Visit any American city and you will find community members celebrating their neighborhood's heritage and diversity through food. Festivals, street fairs, farmers markets and church socials are some of the most recognized ways food is explored and promoted by residents both for each other and for visitors. In contemporary society, culinary tours have also emerged as a means to sample the local, ethnic and historic treasures that many neighborhoods have to offer. The most popular tour offered takes advantage of a city's structural density and walkability. Lasting two to three hours, participants are lead by a tour guide as they walk through the neighborhood. They step into shops, visit with merchants and sample food along the way. Cities such as Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore and nearly every borough of New York City all offer similar versions of a walking culinary tour. Even in Los Angeles ? a city not known to be pedestrian-friendly ? such tours thrive in select neighborhoods. Tours offered along the outer edge of the city and in rural areas are more reliant on luxury motor coaches, buses, or vans to transport participants due to the area's lower population density and greater distance between merchants. While the mode of transport is different, the general structure remains the same. A guide leads the group through an area, stopping to visit merchants and sample items they produce. Since such tours ? like those offered near Pittsburgh, Detroit, Traverse City and Savannah ? last between six and seven hours, they are marketed as all-day excursions. Merchants are given more time to dazzle participants through cooking demonstrations, wine pairings or even a 'tour within a tour' experience. ..." -- from Introduction.