Savor Seattle Food Tours Review: Is It Worth It?

Is The Original Food & Culture Tour of Pike Place Market with Savor Food Tours worth taking?

I did it, and as a Washingtonian local, I say YES it is!

The foodie walking tour was 2.5 hours long and included an extensive history lesson on Pike Place Market, where even I learned lots of new things. We also stopped at 8 different businesses, with some handing out more than one sample. 

A couple of stops I feel could’ve been swapped out for something better, but that’s my biggest qualm.

Overall, this is a great introduction to Pike Place Market, and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Seattle for the first time.

Here’s my full, honest review.

The Check-In Experience

Savor Food Tours in Seattle has their own headquarters on 1st Ave, which most walking tours don’t have. This made for an easy place to meet up with the tour guide, rather than wait awkwardly in front of the first stop on the tour. 

It’s basically one giant room with concrete floors and tall ceilings, giving it a cold, minimalist atmosphere, but it doesn’t really matter since you’re only there to check in and start the tour.

There’s a seating area with couches, drinks in a fridge for purchase, and a few shelves selling locally made products.

Checking in was easy, I gave the front desk girl my name only, no reservation number needed, and that was it.

There is one shared bathroom, but they make sure to keep it clean. A very large team-building group was on the tour prior to my tour time, and the employees made a point to go in and clean up after them so our group would have a clean bathroom. 

We were handed our tour stickers, a requirement for tours going through Pike Place Market. Plus, we were told that a lot of the market vendors would give us discounts if we flashed them the sticker.

💁‍♀️ One sneaky little thing to know when booking: They make a big deal about being a company with a no-tipping model. But in reality, they instead charge an involuntary 20% tipping fee when you purchase your tickets at check out. 

Tour Start

Our tour guide, Katheryn, gave us the rundown on how the day would proceed. As to be expected, she was a bit overly enthusiastic and admitted ahead of time that there would be some groanable dad jokes, which there were.

We started with a little icebreaker, going around our group of 16 and sharing our names, where we were visiting from, and our favorite comfort food.

Then we gathered outside and practiced our tour group huddle, which we’d use at each stop to keep passersbys from stealing our food samples. Apparently it happens often, and it definitely happened on our tour a few times.

Savor Food has a signature pink umbrella so you don’t lose your tour guide in the market crowds. I will say, even though I’m super familiar with the market and totally capable of following a group, having that pink umbrella to look for as we went from one stop to the next just made walking through the market a little easier with less thinking. Super appreciated.

Savor Food’s headquarters is conveniently located just a couple blocks from Pike Place Market. We walked that distance without any commentary from Katheryn, so there were a few minutes of “dead air” before the tour really got going.

Once we reached the market, she stopped us in front of the iconic Pike Place Market sign and gave us a short history of the market, using a newspaper clipping on her iPad as a visual.

Then it was off to eat some food.

Tour Stops

At about the 25 minute mark from the start time of the tour, we got our first sample. 

We huddled in a corner while Katheryn went to get our Daily Dozen samples. These little donuts are made fresh to order. We got not one but two cinnamon and sugar covered donuts. These donuts are a breed all their own, somewhere between a cake donut in flavor and a fluffy elephant ear in texture.

Katheryn told us some interesting insights into the history of the business and how they uniquely run things.

From there, we passed by the famous fish throwers and happened to catch them in the act of throwing. Katheryn then parked us in front of the fish market to give us more Pike Place history and explain a little about how the whole market operates. 

We crossed the street, and 17 minutes after our first sample, we received our second at Frank’s Quality Produce. This time, it was a whole fruit platter with peaches, grapes, and cherries.

Now, while the fruit was delicious, it wasn’t a very exciting sample to have on a food tour. Especially since you can get free fruit samples here on your own, as well as from some of the other fruit vendors in the market.

Afterward, Katheryn took us to one of the bridges on the other side of the market with a nice view of the Seattle Great Wheel and the waterfront. 

She had us wait on the bridge while she went back for our next sampling from Chukar Cherries. These giant dried cherries and chocolate-covered fruits have been in the market since the early 1990s and are a Seattle souvenir staple. You’ll find them in gift shops and even at the airport, but they originated right here at Pike Place Market.

Our little sample cup included a dried cherry, a dark chocolate-covered cherry (my favorite), a truffle cherry, and a honey pecan.

We were also given a card to fill out to receive a discount if we ordered from them online.

Again, though, this stop seemed a bit wasted since Chukar Cherries will give you free samples of anything you want to try on your own.

We then followed our pink umbrella leader to hilly Pine St where she parked us for our next two samples.

No Pike Place food tour is complete without Pike Place Chowder and Rachel’s Ginger Beer, two staples of the market.

I am not the biggest seafood fan, especially when it comes to shellfish. But let me tell you, my favorite soup of all time is the award-winning Pike Place Clam Chowder. The creaminess and flavor are balanced perfectly, and the clam pieces are quite small, so I don’t have to worry about any weird chewy pieces.

If you’re allergic to shellfish (or just don’t want it), Savor Food accommodates. We had someone with a shellfish allergy on our tour, and they were given the Thai curry soup instead, which I thought was a great alternative.

Once we finished our soup, Katheryn went and got us a refreshing cup of Rachel’s ginger beer. I always forget how good this fresh ginger beer is. It’s the perfect combination of spicy and sweet.

And the ice pellet texture could make even the most devoted Sonic ice addicts convert.

We made our way to the border of the market and crossed the street to Mr. Fish Chips & Chowder, the biggest surprise of the day for me. This Tom Douglas restaurant served us a piece of fried Alaskan cod on a bed of coleslaw.

This fried fish transported me right back to when I lived in Alaska. It was soooo good! I was ready to ditch the tour, go inside, and order me a full plate right then and there lol!

Turkish Delight was our second-to-last stop. It had been a while since I’d last had anything from them, so it was good to have a refresher. Plus, I learned the history of the owners and how this is a legit mom-and-pop shop.

Our samples included a cup of lentil soup, which was soooo good. I could definitely picture eating that on a misty PNW day. We also got two pieces of Turkish delight.

I guess the tour usually only gets one flavor, but this time we were also given a Turkish coffee-flavored one in addition to the usual mango.

Turkish delights are a fine treat, and I can tell these are good-quality ones, but it’s still a treat I don’t understand Edmund lying to his siblings over.

The final stop on our tour was Hellenika Cultured Creamery. I had been waiting a while to try this frozen Greek yogurt, or rather, cultured gelato, so I was excited.

One of the “gelato chefs” took over the tour and gave us a very in-depth, scientific spiel on how they make this unique frozen treat.

While we listened, we sampled the Seattle Fog, an Earl Grey-flavored gelato. Because it’s such a rich dessert, even the small glass jar was a satisfying enough size.

I was expecting this to just be a decent place to get ice cream, but the fermentation gives the gelato a unique tang you don’t get with normal gelato. It was so good, and I will definitely be coming back!

If I had gone back that same day, I could’ve gotten 10% off with my tour sticker.

Tour End

We all gathered around for a final farewell and a chance to ask any lingering questions. Katheryn also had us go around and share one thing we enjoyed about the tour.

It was kinda funny because we weren’t a close-knit group like I’ve experienced on other tours, but nobody really seemed to want to leave. It was like we were all waiting around in case Katheryn had one more interesting nugget of information to share.

She literally had to tell us to go and be free, like twice.

I think that says a lot about the tour. Even though we’d been walking, eating, and learning for 2.5 hours, we all seemed to want just a little bit more.

So, Is the Savor Seattle Food Tour Worth It?

I think Savor Food did a great job, and the Original Food & Culture Tour of Pike Place Market is totally worth taking, especially if you’re new to Pike Place Market and want to sample some of the classics, and 99% of travelers agree with me.

With the amount of market information shared along the way, I almost want to say this is more of a History of Pike Place Market tour with food samples. But I guess that just means you get your money’s worth of both history and food.

As for the amount of food, I came into the tour hungry and left feeling satiated, but not full. I was still contemplating getting lunch afterward. So don’t expect a meal’s worth of food, especially since the samples are spread out over 2+ hours.

One thing that didn’t quite match my expectations was the interaction with the businesses. On their site, Savor Food says that “Guests meet the vendors and shopkeepers behind the food.”

We met ONE.

At most stops, we were parked off to the side of the walkway or outside the shop while Katheryn went in, got our food, and brought it back to us. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re expecting to actually meet and interact with the people behind the businesses you’re sampling, that wasn’t my experience.

Even with a couple of samples I would’ve swapped out, I walked away knowing more about Pike Place Market, discovering a few new favorites, and feeling like the tour was well worth taking.