Planning a Walking Food Tour Date with your Valentine

“Why not plan your own walking food tour as a date night or girls night out? What about a date with your son or daughter? How about taking your parents for a fun evening out on the town? A team building event at work? The options are endless!”

By Lisa Payne

I have a really unique idea for your Valentine’s Day celebration or next date night. Plan your own walking food tour with your spouse, kids or even friends!

My husband and I love walking food tours. We do them in every city we visit. It’s the best way to learn about local food and a whole lot of local history. We’ve also done haunted tours and beverage tours. We did a food tour today in downtown Denver with our kids for their first time and they loved it. We started at a coal fired pizza joint off 21st and walked our way to amazing empanadas, Colorado green chili, fry bread tacos, and ended at Union Station with custard tarts. We are so full and happy and a little more knowledgeable about our amazing city.

As we were walking around, I thought, why not plan your own walking food tour as a date night or girls night out? What about a date with your son or daughter? How about taking your parents for a fun evening out on the town? A team building event at work? The options are endless!

And being the idea person that I am, I started thinking that there are so many options within the food tour realm. You can pick a neighborhood and find restaurants within a few blocks or a mile loop. Near Broomfield there are several towns with a downtown area to walk. Louisville, Lafayette, and Arvada to start and in Broomfield you can do this at the Arista Development. Technically it could also be a driving food tour if you want to hit places that aren’t within walking distance of each other.

And when my mind goes the direction of driving, the food tour gets so much more creative! You could do a “bakery” tour, the best pizzas in town tour, the best seafood tour, or a desserts tour. And with a driver you can do a cocktails tour, a wine tour, or a craft beer tour. I mean come on, this could go on and on! Eating out will never be boring again!

Here is a simple plan to get you started:

Pick an area or neighborhood with a good mix of restaurants. If you are driving you can do a category to try different pizza spots or desserts. But if doing the actual walking food tour, pick an area with at least four to five restaurants you can walk to in a three-hour window with a stay of about 30 minutes at each one. Know when each restaurant opens/ closes and the distance between them. Make sure the last one is dessert!

Timing is important. If this event is Friday or Saturday night you will need to call ahead to make sure they know your plan and reserve a table. If you don’t want to mess with reservations, plan for a midafternoon when restaurants are slower and you can pop in.

Do a little research before you go, and find out the specialty items at each stop so you can order right away and get on your way. If there are two of you, I would pick one item to share at each restaurant so you don’t get too full. Or only order appetizers to share.

If you don’t want to go through the effort of designing your own tour, google “walking food tour” and the city and see what you find. I wish you a fun new way of eating out!

Lisa Payne writes about food, family, and home. You can reach her at paynefam6@gmail.com.