Lexi Ducommun
Joe Gaglio of Gotham Bagels explains the bagel-making process to participants in a Capital City Food Tour.
For more than a decade, Erica Fox Gehrig led architectural and history tours through Madison, with a promise of something to eat or drink at the end.
Now, the promise of Gehrig’s tours is the food, and a growing group of hungry wanderers are joining her and other food tour leaders throughout the city.
Gehrig and her husband, Mark, are the new owners of Madison Food Explorers (madisonfoodexplorers.com), which was the city’s first food tour business. Another, Madison Eats (madisoneats.net), was founded by Otehlia Cassidy in 2012, and Capital City Food Tours (capitalcityfoodtours.com) was launched this year by Brittany Hammer. The tours draw a mix of visitors and locals. All the companies will also do private tours, and have corporate clients.
Right now, these types of casual culinary tours are popular from coast to coast. Gehrig, who founded the walking tours that the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation has offered for more than a decade, says that “people are okay with spending money on an experience where they learn something.”
Erica Fox Gehrig and Mark Gehrig, the new owners of Madison Food Explorers.
Tour prices for all three companies range from $30 to $50, which includes a variety of dishes and beverages. The three companies vary in their approaches, but all offer a way to experience the city through its food.
“I don’t think there is a shortage of people who want to explore what we have here in Madison,” says Cassidy, whose tour company began by concentrating on east-side neighborhoods, “and I think we all offer something different.”
Madison Food Explorers includes a strong dose of city and neighborhood history to go with its food insights. Madison Eats is more specifically food-based, as Cassidy takes advantage of connections she’s forged with chefs as a food writer. Capital City Food Tours concentrates on the Capitol Square area, over the lunch hour.
Madison Food Explorers was launched in 2010 by Andrea Hughes. New owner Gehrig, who still works for the Wisconsin Historical Society and is a member of the Madison Landmarks Commission, worked for Hughes giving tours. Gehrig was drawn to the food tours because they combined her love of history and architecture with her love of food.
“I blame my mother for all of it,” says Gehrig. “She was probably the first woman in Monona to feed her kid pesto.”
Madison Food Explorers offers three tours. A weekly Lake to Lake tour begins each Saturday at Monona Terrace and ends at the Memorial Union Terrace, with stops in between at Caracas Empanadas food cart, Fromagination, Ian’s Pizza, Vom Fass, Himal Chuli, State Street Brats and the Memorial Union’s ice cream counter.
“The places we choose aren’t holes in the wall you’ve never heard of, but good representations of what Madison has to offer,” Gehrig says. “I learned the history by sitting and talking to the restaurant owners.”
Once a month, there is also a Monroe Street Brunch Tour and a Happy Hour Tour. Madison Food Explorers is organizing a drink event on June 18 at Robinia Courtyard that includes primers on wine at Barolo, cocktails at Julep and coffee at A-OK.
Otehlia Cassidy
Food tours introduce dishes like Graze’s bibimbap.
Cassidy began Madison Eats with an Atwood Avenue tour, one that this season includes Tex Tubb’s, Monsoon Siam, Table Wine, Next Door Brewing and Chocolaterian.
“Atwood represents something that’s really cool about Madison — what you might not see, what you might not know about,” Cassidy says.
Madison Eats also offers an Ethnic Eats tour on Williamson Street, a food cart tour over the lunch hour, a B-Cycle Brunch Tour and a downtown tour.
Capital City Food Tours begins its circuit at the Great Dane Pub and Brewing Co., then heads to Gotham Bagels, Kilwins, Wisconsin Brewing Tap Haus and Dlux. Founder Hammer, who was inspired to launch her company after taking a food walking tour in Chicago, hopes to branch out into the suburbs and to find ways to create related events in the cold months that don’t involve walking much outside.
“A lot of people may think that this is an activity for visitors or tourists,” says Hammer. “But every local that I have had has walked away eating something they had never tried and learning about a piece of Madison that they never knew.”
Tours are geared toward adults. Those who don’t drink alcohol get other options when beer or wine is served. Tours last about three hours.
Food and drink have a way of connecting people to each other, says Gehrig. A group may start as strangers, but “you sit down to eat together, and you all end up talking together.” She likens it to going to a bed-and-breakfast: “You get this shared experience with people you don’t know. Usually by the end, they’re all talking to each other, and I’m just walking in front.”
Otehlia Cassidy
Folks get to know each other on a Madison Eats food tour.
