Culinary Tours: The Most Delicious Way to Visit West Michigan

You've heard of taking a fall color tour around West Michigan, driving around to look at all the beautiful colors that go on display around this time of year. You may have even been a tourist in your home town, traveling around to visit the museums and well-known landmarks near by. But have you ever considered going on a Culinary Tour? 

Whether exploring new culinary experiences in your hometown or taking a culinary tour to taste a new town’s offerings, culinary tours can be focused on whatever your preference is! Want to find the best pulled-pork sandwich in town? Looking to get to know an area by sampling all of its local brews? A culinary tour is the way to go! You can plan the trip yourself by picking out restaurants that look appealing to you, or you can sign up for an established tour, and walk or drive around a town to hit all of the culinary highlights!

We've picked some of the best ways to get out and explore the culinary richness of West Michigan below. Why not take an afternoon or a weekend and tempt your taste buds on a culinary tour?

Tasty Morsel Culinary Excursions

West Michigan Culinary Tour Ideas:

San Chez Bistro, located in the heart of Grand Rapids, is a great stop on your culinary tour of the area! Take a break from fast food with breakfast and lunch by San Chez Café, made with the finest local ingredients, and prepared to order fresh seven days a week. San Chez Bistro offers a blend of authentic European and Mediterranean cuisine in a fun, laid-back, and artful atmosphere. Along with consuming delicious food, San Chez is offering a few opportunities for you to learn more! Sign up for their “Perfect Pairings” class 11/14 to learn how to pair beer & wine with your dinner, a knife skills class on 11/20, or “Effortless Entertaining” on 11/18 to become the best chef for your holidays parties you’ll be hosting.

Hudsonville Ice Cream, based out of our very own Hudsonville, MI, has a few limited edition flavors to celebrate the deliciousness of fall! The new “Pure Michigan Double Berry Pie” flavor combines blueberries and strawberries with pie crust pieces in Original Vanilla ice cream, and was even created by a Michigan native, Linda Ann Stewart from Taylor, MI! They will also be bringing back “Pure Michigan Caramel Apple,” which is a lightly flavored apple ice cream with apple and caramel throughout, and tastes just like fall should!

Promote Michigan is excited to announce the 6th Annual Grand Rapids International Wine, Beer, and Food Festival, taking place November 21-23 at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. The festival features over one hundred wineries from around the world, offering samples of an many as 1,200 assorted wines. Chefs from some of the area’s top restaurants will be preparing and serving small plates of their culinary specialties, as well as partnering with wineries and breweries for special pairing meals. You’ll be able to attend seminars, demonstrations, and workshops at the festival, as well as sampling many of the finest beer, wine, and food offerings from the region.

Hungry Village Tours

Looking for a bit of mystery to spice up your culinary tour of West Michigan? Stop by St. Julian Winery in Paw Paw on November 2nd and enjoy a five-course dinner paired with locally made wines, but keep your eye out for the murder in the winery! Who knows, you might even be the killer! 

There are two culinary tours available daily from May through December through Hungry Village Tours. One is a walking tour, exploring Saugatuck's and Douglas’ culinary secrets behind their Saugatuck storefronts with history, demonstrations, and tastings. The second option is a Delicious Drive, featuring a tour of the lakeshore’s producers including farms, orchards, blueberry patches, vintners, creameries, and smokehouses. Both tours depart from the Saugatuck Center for the Arts, and offer extraordinary culinary adventures exploring the lakeshore’s plate! 

If you’re in the Traverse City area, make sure you sign up for one of the Tasty Morsel Culinary Excursions! You can choose to participate in a walking tour down Front Street or take the Tasty Morsel van to enjoy the best of the Leelanau Peninsula. With stops along the way including places like an organic winery, hydroponic farm, chocolate shop, fish market, cheese production facility, specialty herb and spice shop, bakery, distillery and more, this is a delicious way to spend a day!

San Chez Bistro

When visiting the Petosky Area, they offer a culinary tour with a printable download (http://www.petoskeyarea.com/culinary-trail-131/) so you can keep track of the delicious area restaurants you have yet to visit!