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.