The Bottom Line
Pros
- Nosh Walks cover neighborhoods that other tours overlook
- Myra shares some delicious finds you'd miss on your own
- Myra is outgoing and engages both tour participants and local residents
Cons
- Tour felt very off-the-cuff and guide frequently flipped through AIA guide looking for information
- Much of the tour was spent traveling between different places, making things feel very disjointed
- Very little historical or cultural information was shared with tour participants
Description
- Nosh Walks Public Tours are offered on weekends from late March - December. Nosh Walks can also be booked for private tours.
- Nosh Walks Tour Cost: $35-45 ($3 discount for NoshNews subscribers)
- Price of tour does not include transportation, beverages or gratuities at restaurants.
- Foods sampled on the Bronx Bites Tour:
- ginger beer
- Ghanaian lunch
- thiakry African dessert pudding
- Irish Trifle
- Stops on the Bronx Bites Tour:
- Joyce Kilmer Park
- Hallal Coffee Shop
- Papaye
- La Oaxaquena
- Tri-Eddy Deli
- Celtic Kitchen
Guide Review - Nosh Walks New York City Walking Tour
Myra Alperson's Bronx Bites tour ambitiously tries to cover a lot of ground in one day, visiting the African/Mexican areas of Morris Heights and the Irish neighborhood of Woodlawn. Unfortunately, the experience suffers from being too ambitious. There is far too much time spent on the tour traveling from place to place (with little narration from our tour guide en route) and too little time spent sharing information about the history and culture of the neighborhoods and the foods we were sampling.Another problem that presented itself was a lack of planning. Whether it was when the tour guide left to buy cups for sampling the ginger beer (since this stop/tasting was planned) or when on several occasions, Myra would stop at a park or landmark and flip through her AIA Guide for information, only to say that the particular landmark or street wasn't mentioned, it seemed that many details were overlooked in the planning of the tour. Since Myra conducts each tour only once a season, it makes presenting a polished and refined experience challenging.
To Myra's credit, she is a very outgoing tour guide who quickly learned the names of all 16 people on the tour. Myra also engaged neighborhood residents easily, which enabled us to peek inside the lobby of an interesting Art Deco building on the Grand Concourse and inside some Muslim cultural centers, as well as to hear some neighborhood residents talk about the great deal they got on a new apartment. Myra relished the serendipitous opportunities that presented themselves throughout the tour, but those moments are not enough to make a tour worthwhile.
Myra's tours do offer visitors a glimpse into neighborhoods that few other tour guides cover, I only wish the experience was better organized and covered more information about the areas we were visiting.
