Pike Place Market Food Tour: 10 Tastings & Hidden Stops

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/6

Duration2h

GroupUp to 12

LanguagesEN

Mobile ticketAccepted

Ten Food Stops Through Pike Place Market with a Guide Who's Worked There Since 1987

You visit ten vendors across Pike Place Market's main and lower levels, sampling James Beard–award winners, smoked salmon, handmade biscuits, pizza, and Filipino cuisine. Your guide, a Market Family insider since 1987, takes you to exclusive stops and down into historic building levels most tours skip. The tour includes all samples, vendor discounts, and ends with dessert near the Sleepless in Seattle filming location.

Step-by-step itinerary

Explore Pike Place Market with food samples

Meet at The Crumpet Shop sign
Pass Can-Can Cabaret, learn market history
View Piroshky Piroshky bakery operation
Sample biscuits at Honest Biscuits
Visit City Fish, taste smoked salmon
Sample Filipino food at Oriental Mart
Try pizza at DeLaurenti Italian Grocery
Pass Pike Place Fish Co, see fish throwing
Sample dried fruit at Simply Seattle
Pass Don and Joes butcher shop
Lunch at Secret Garden with views
Sample teas at MarketSpice
Visit Fairley Building magic shop
Pass Golden Age comic book shop
Pass Holy Cow records store
See The Athenian lunch counter
Dessert at Chukar Cherries

The Experience

You're standing at Pike Place Market for the first time, or maybe the fifth, and you realize you have no idea where to actually eat or what's worth your time. The Market is nine acres of stalls, alleys, and levels that can swallow an afternoon without you tasting anything real. Supersonic John leads groups small enough that you're not herded—usually under a dozen people—and he's been working here since 1987, so he knows which vendors will actually hand you a sample and which ones are just for looking. The tour hits ten stops: Piroshky Piroshky's hand-rolled pastries, City Fish's alderwood smoked salmon (opened 1917), the O-Mart's James Beard–winning Filipino food where you meet Ate Lei, DeLaurenti's pizza counter from 1946, and a few places most tourists never find.

You start at the Crumpet Shop's sign—easy to spot, hard to miss—and work downward through the main section, past the Can-Can Cabaret while John explains how the Market survived and what it actually is. There's a stop at Honest Biscuits on the west side where you eat fluffy biscuits with Beechers cheese while looking out at Elliott Bay, and you walk by Pike Place Fish Co (yes, the one where they throw fish) without the chaos of the crowd. The tour includes a meat and cheese trail mix from Don and Joe's, dried fruit samples at Simply Seattle, and ends with chocolate-covered cherries at Chukar near the Athenian—the lunch counter from Sleepless in Seattle. The whole thing takes about two and a half hours, and by the end you've actually eaten, learned something about the place, and gotten vendor discounts you can use later.

What makes this different from wandering alone is that John stops at exclusive Tasty Tours spots—the O-Mart VIP experience, the DeLaurenti pizza counter—and he takes you down into the seven-level Fairley Building to the longest-running magic shop in the Pacific Northwest, a place you'd never find on your own. He also explains the role of the PDA, the Market Foundation, and the Historic District in keeping Pike Place one of the world's seven great public markets. Small groups mean you're not holding up a line of thirty people while someone takes a photo, and you're not fighting to hear the guide over other tours.

What’s included

Ten vendor food samples from Pike Place Market merchants, including Piroshky Piroshky, City Fish smoked salmon, O-Mart Filipino cuisine, DeLaurenti pizza, Honest Biscuits with Beechers cheese, Don and Joe's meat and cheese trail mix, dried fruit samples, and Chukar Cherries dessert.
Vendor discounts at all shops visited.
A guided tour led by a Market Family insider with access to exclusive stops and lower-level historic locations.
The tour takes approximately two and a half hours and includes all samples—no additional food purchases required.

Good to know

Easy physical levelWheelchair accessibleStroller friendlyInfant seats availablePets welcomePublic transport nearby

Operated by Tasty Tours

Is this one for you?Book this if you want to actually taste Pike Place Market instead of just walking through it, and you'd rather not spend an hour figuring out which vendors are worth your time. The small group size and exclusive stops are what make the difference between a snack run and a real introduction to the place.