San Francisco Chinatown and Little Italy Food Tour with Dylan's Tours
It’s always fun playing tourist in your own city. As a Bay Area native, I sometimes take all that San Francisco has to offer for granted. I get caught up in my daily routines and forget to branch out of my immediate neighborhood. However, I love playing tour guide whenever my friends from out of town visit. Whether you live in the city and want to show your friends around or you’re a tourist visiting from another city, Dylan’s Tours is a fun way to explore San Francisco.
Dylan’s Tours offers a variety of tours around the city but I opted for their customizable private e-tuk (electric tuk tuk) tour, which allows you to create your own itinerary based off what you’re most interested in experiencing. You can either give them a list of spots you’d like to see or work with their team to create your perfect itinerary. The e-tuk fits up to six people but I would say four is the max if you want to be comfortable. Make sure to wear layers since there are no windows and SF is usually on the chilly side!
Being a foodie, we made our tour a food crawl throughout North Beach, hitting up spots in both Chinatown and Little Italy. Dylan’s will coordinate a pick-up spot (usually your hotel if you’re visiting from out of town) and begin your tour from there. The best part about the tuk (okay, maybe not the best but definitely one of the highlights) is that they serve beer (and water). You basically have a designated driver for a few hours so definitely take advantage of that. Read on for all the spots we visited on our tour and if you decide to take a tour with Dylan’s, use code allieeats at checkout to get 10% off!
Delicious Dim Sum (Chinatown) - Our original plan was to start our food crawl with dim sum at Good Mong Kok but some of these Chinese shops have the most unpredictable schedules and hours so we only found out that Good Mong Kok was closed for a week once we arrived and saw the hand-written note taped to the door. Good thing Delicious Dim Sum was right around the corner and they were open! Delicious Dim Sum is a small, hole-in-the-wall, take-out spot serving up super cheap dumplings and other dim sum goodies. They have a menu hanging on the wall and you just list off all the items you want. Then they put it all in a takeout container so you can walk around Chinatown or head to your next spot while eating (I call it efficiency).
AA Bakery (Chinatown) - Since the hours at Golden Gate Bakery are also very unpredictable and you never know if they’re open until you get there (seeing a trend yet?), we chose to pick-up egg tarts at AA Bakery instead. It also happens to be across the street from Good Mong Kok and around the corner from Delicious Dim Sum so it was an easy crawl. If you go to AA, make sure to get a few pineapple custard buns as well as those were the real winners.
Lombard Street - After leaving Chinatown, we took the scenic route to Little Italy and made our way down SF’s crookedest street. They usually don’t allow tour companies to drive down the street so you may end up having to hike down from the top or hike up from the bottom (the bottom is where the photo ops of the street are). I’ve been going down this street ever since I was a kid and it never gets old! Just don’t go during peak times because sitting in traffic and going down the hill at 1 mph is not very fun.
Slice House (Little Italy) - Don’t want to wait for a table at Tony’s Pizza? Head next door to Slice House (also owned by Tony’s) to grab a slice, or two, or an entire pie! Slice House obviously doesn’t have as many options as Tony’s but they do have the best Margherita around (it’s award-winning). The tomato sauce is on the sweeter side, which is exactly how I like my pizza. The slices here are pretty generous, so save some stomach space!
Other spots to consider that we didn’t have time for:
Liguria Bakery (Little Italy) - Apparently it’s not only the Chinese shops that have unpredictable hours…but apparently so do some of the Italian shops! Liguria has some of the best focaccia bread but make sure to go earlier in the day than later since they seem to have a tendency to closer earlier than their listed store hours. Who knew happiness could only cost $5.
Victoria Pastry (Little Italy) - Cookies, cakes, cannolis, and coffee. Basically anything that starts with a C can be found here. Just kidding but you can at least find those four things and all the carbs you will ever need. This is actually the only spot on this list I haven’t tried myself (we ran out of time during our tour) but our tour guide pointed it out and mentioned how good their pastries are. It’s also conveniently located at Washington Square (across the park from Tony’s Pizza and down the street from Liguria). If you end up going, let me know how it is!
Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (Chinatown) - This little shop is located down the alley across from Delicious Dim Sum so make sure to poke your head in while walking around with your dim sum. It’s kind of fun to see how fortune cookies are made, especially since this is something I have never really thought about. The shop has been open for over 50 years now and they’re still going strong as you will see with the line out the door on the weekends. They offer different flavors and even custom fortunes but those will have to be pre-ordered.
