An eat­ing tour of Wel­ling­ton? That’s basic­ally every week­end in my life, but it hadn’t occurred to me to try a struc­tured one. Enter Zest Food Tours, who run eat­ing extra­vag­an­zas mas­quer­ad­ing as walk­ing tours. Get your cul­ture and his­tory while also stuff­ing your face? Yes please.

We took a con­densed sampler ver­sion of the Cap­it­al Tastes tour – stop­ping briefly at some of the loc­ales to talk about what we’d eat there instead of actu­ally eat­ing – but still had a sol­id couple of hours mean­der­ing the city. The real ver­sion is three and a half hours of intense snack­ing and leis­urely strolling, rain or shine. 

The tar­get mar­ket for tours like this is usu­ally tour­ists, but our guide had so many tid­bits and fact­oids about Wel­ling­ton that even our group of exper­i­enced eat­ers and blog­gers learned new things. Heath­er is burst­ing with love for Wellington’s food scene, so the tour feels more like a day with an enthu­si­ast­ic geek friend than a stuffy tour. She hap­pily ven­tured on tan­gents based on what we knew or what we were inter­ested in, so there’s def­in­itely some­thing for every­one. 

We star­ted with cof­fee and a scone at Mojo, where we heard the ori­gin story of how Wel­ling­ton became Grace­land for cof­fee afi­cion­ados. We then wandered on along the water­front and Civic Square, and chat­ted about archi­tec­ture, his­tory, and earth­quakes on the way to Gelis­simo, where we sampled some of the wares while learn­ing their his­tory and the dif­fer­ence between ice cream and gelato. 

The Zest team has put the time into build­ing rela­tion­ships with the estab­lish­ments they vis­it, so you feel like a warmly-wel­comed friend of a reg­u­lar instead of a pesky tour­ist. Case in point – we happened across Gra­ham, the own­er, as we were sampling gelato at Gelis­simo. He imme­di­ately invited us into the back kit­chen (thus tick­ing ‘Wonka-style ice cream fact­ory tour’ off my buck­et list) to show us where the magic hap­pens, and let us taste a few exper­i­ments from the freez­er. 

(Pro tip: always ask a pro­du­cer about their favour­ite. Chances are they’ll give you anoth­er sample.)

The tour includes a detour for cheese and accoutre­ments at Moore Wilson’s, a nice way to show­case products from the wider region. We wrapped up in the Hannah’s Lane­way, where the full tour would sample their way through the Leeds Street Bakery, Fix & Fogg, and the Wel­ling­ton Chocol­ate fact­ory. The guide would typ­ic­ally send their charges off with a list of per­son­al­ised recom­mend­a­tions for fur­ther eat­ing, but we just swapped stor­ies of our favour­ite haunts. 

The stand­ard tour is a sol­id half day of explor­ing (longer if you go for the Gour­met pack­age and get a two-course wine-matched lunch at the end), and nat­ur­ally lends itself to con­tinu­ing on to one of Wellington’s many bars or cafes, so it would be a great way to enter­tain vis­it­ing fam­ily mem­bers (or get someone out of the house while you dec­or­ate for a sur­prise party). The walk­ing bit is def­in­itely sec­ond­ary to the eat­ing, so while you should wear com­fy shoes, you don’t need to be espe­cially fit. 

Zest will tail­or the tour to any tastes, so it could be a fun activ­ity for a pre-wed­ding do, cor­por­ate team build­ing exer­cise, or birth­day party. As Heath­er rattled off some of the themed tours they’d done in the past, I got the impres­sion she’d wel­come the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing a tour for a really spe­cif­ic set of interests, so bring her your pick­i­est rel­at­ive.

All in all, it’s a deli­cious remind­er of just how much this town has to offer. I left want­ing to sign up to become a tour guide.  The $185 price tag may feel a bit spendy, but the intim­ate size (capped at eight people) and per­son­al guide make it more of a treat yo’self kind of day than fol­low­ing around a robot guide wav­ing a flag and recit­ing a script. Some­times, when you’re over­whelmed by options, it’s nice to let someone else make choices for you. Also, there’s a lot of food. 

Recom­men­ded for ven­tur­ing bey­ond your usu­als, or intro­du­cing new arrivals to the joys of eat­ing in Wel­ling­ton. Or just get­ting your vis­it­ing fam­ily out of your hair for a few hours.