New England Food Tour: Taste the Region’s Best Bites (2025)

Best Massachusetts Food Tours

Boston is one of New England’s culinary capitals, so it was hard to limit this list to just one Boston tour. I’ve narrowed it down to three:

➡️ Boston Small-Group Walking Food Tour with Tastings

On this five-star-rated tour, you’ll explore Boston’s historic North End neighborhood while enjoying a mixture of New England seafood specialties and Italian-American classics.

➡️ Bites of Boston Chinatown Tour

If you want to learn about the Chinese-American history of Boston while sampling amazing, authentic food, including dim sum and dumplings, book a private Chinatown tour with Bites of Boston.

➡️ Boston Delicious Donut Adventure

If you’d rather experience sweets over savory food items, check out this popular tour hosted by Underground Donut Tour. You’ll get to try several artisanal donut shops around the city while learning more than you probably ever thought you would about the history of donuts.

Want more tours to satisfy your sweet tooth? Boston also has a rich chocolate history that you can learn about and taste. Check out Boston’s best chocolate tours. 

Outside of Boston:

➡️ Salem Food Tours

There’s more to Salem than the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and Salem Food Tours guide Karen will teach you all about another side of its history: its rich spice trade. Enjoy eating your way through this iconic town about 20 miles north of Boston.

➡️ Taste Gloucester

Gloucester is one of the best coastal destinations on the Massachusetts North Shore. On this tour, you’ll try delicious local chowder, bacon-wrapped scallops, a sandwich Gloucester locals have talked about for decades, and more.

Best Rhode Island Food Tours

Check out these popular tours in the Ocean State:

➡️ Newport Neighborhood Food Tour

On this tour, you’ll get to visit restaurants frequented by locals, from a historic tavern to a boutique hot dog eatery (who knew there was such a thing?). Customers rave about the knowledge of the tour guides and the quality and variety of food you’ll experience on the tour. 

➡️ Newport Walking Food and History Tour

This tour is similar to the one above but seems to have a greater balance between food and history. If you’re hoping to experience both historic sites and food on your tour, this might be a better option. But note the first tour above has higher popularity overall.

➡️ Downcity Providence Food Tour

Providence is another foodie favorite in Rhode Island. Join this tour that will take you to six tasting spots in the Downcity Arts District, including an experimental bakery, a Chinese bun shop, and a seafood shack.

Best Connecticut Food Tour

I lived in New Haven, Connecticut for 2.5 years, where I discovered its rich and diverse food scene. It’s one of the best places in Connecticut to explore a variety of cuisines.

➡️ Taste of New Haven Tour

Taste of New Haven offers several different tours to fit varying interests. A few of them focus on pizza, a passionate food topic in New Haven. (There has been a longtime rivalry among New Haven pizzerias, including Sally’s, Pepe’s, Modern, and Zuppardi’s.)

I also recommend trying Taste of New Haven’s Westville tour, where you’ll get to try much more than pizza, including my favorite Turkish cafe near where I used to live: Pistachio.

Best New Hampshire Food Tour

Portsmouth has one of the highest numbers of restaurants per capita in the U.S., so it’s the place to go if you’re searching for good food in New Hampshire.

➡️ Best of Portsmouth Tour

On this tour, you’ll travel to five restaurants that food experts such as Rachel Ray and Good Morning America have deemed “the best.” 

You might get to try the clam chowder that was voted Best in New England, a restaurant rated as the #4 place to eat in New England, and a dessert that was seen in Chocolatier Magazine.

Note: I do not see any upcoming dates for this tour, so you may want to email them directly to find out what’s available.

Best Vermont Food Tours

Vermont is filled with family-owned farms and the best of nature, giving you high-quality food options to choose from.

📍Vermont Food & Farm Tours

On this one-of-a-kind tour, you’ll see an organic farm in action and tour a maple sugarhouse before enjoying a lovingly prepared, organic, and farm-fresh lunch on site.

🍽 Also worth checking out: Burlington, Vermont
The town of Burlington is Vermont’s foodie capital, and while I couldn’t find any formal food tours currently in operation there, I’ve included a bunch of restaurant recommendations in this Burlington itinerary post.

Best Maine Food Tours

Here are some excellent tours to check out to experience the best of culinary Maine:

📍Portland’s World of Flavors Tour (NEW!)

This is a new tour offered by Maine DayVentures, where you’ll sample Portland’s food items from all over the world. A few of the options include Japanese miso soup, Indian poori, Mexican tapas, Mediterranean pizza, and Lebanese-style baklava.

📍Savor Bar Harbor’s Culinary Walking Tour

To experience the food culture of Bar Harbor and Mt. Desert Island, try this culinary walking tour. You’ll have the chance to try several seafood items and ice cream while learning about the history of Bar Harbor from a knowledgeable guide.

📍Lucky Catch Portland Lobster Tour

While not a traditional food tour, I’m including this for all the lobster lovers out there. With Lucky Catch, you can go on a lobstering tour to see how lobsters are caught. There are two different tour options, one with a lobster bake at the end and another serving oysters and lobster rolls.

Must-try New England restaurants

Narrowing down the list of must-try restaurants in New England is hard because there are just so many amazing places to check out. But here I’ve compiled my personal favorites!

Connecticut

📍Crepes Choupette, New Haven

This small creperie will make you feel transported to Paris, with its thoughtfully decorated interior and deliciously authentic crepes. The owner, Adil, is a native Parisian and you can tell he puts his heart and soul into his business.

📍Louis’ Lunch, New Haven

This historic hamburger joint is inside the tiniest building you may ever see, but somehow they still manage to pack lots of customers inside. Louis’ Lunch is one of the restaurants around the world that claim to have “invented” the hamburger, and they still serve their burgers on toast instead of in a bun.

📍The Mariner, Mystic

The Mariner is an excellent place for seafood in downtown Mystic, Connecticut’s beloved coastal town that’s filled with maritime history.

Maine

📍Jordan’s Restaurant, Bar Harbor

I’ll never forget the fresh Maine blueberry pancakes I had for breakfast here one morning before hiking at Acadia National Park. They were some of the best – perhaps the best – pancakes I’ve ever had.

📍Ogunquit Beach Lobster House, Ogunquit

This was the place where I tried oysters and a lobster roll for the first time. The restaurant is located on the water with beautiful views all around, and it’s just a stone’s throw from Ogunquit Beach.

Massachusetts

📍Angela’s Cafe, East Boston

This is one of the most popular Mexican restaurants in Boston, with award-winning guacamole. I also love their Pastor Burrito with roasted pork and pineapple. Mmm.

📍Cafe Vanak, Belmont

My husband and I are always on the hunt for a good Persian restaurant, and Cafe Vanak is the best we have found in the Boston area. 

Their kebabs and rice are delicious, and there’s also a Persian grocery store next door where you can pick up more treats to take home. (Try their saffron and rose water ice cream, called bastani. SO GOOD.)

📍Karma, Concord

We stumbled across this Asian fusion restaurant during our visit to Concord and were blown away by the delicious food and beautiful presentation.

New Hampshire

📍Flatbread Company, Portsmouth

This is another restaurant my family has on repeat. Every time we go to Portsmouth, we make sure to stop at Flatbread Company for their wood-fired pizzas made with the freshest local ingredients.

📍The Friendly Toast, Portsmouth

You can find Friendly Toasts in several places now, but the original restaurant is in Portsmouth. I love the quirky and colorful decor and their expansive menu of breakfast and brunch items. One of my favorite dishes is their Friendly Toast Benny (Eggs Benedict).

Rhode Island

📍The Red Parrot, Newport

My family goes to this restaurant every time we’re in Newport. Whenever we think about branching out and trying something else, we end up changing our minds because we love this place so much! Their fish and chips are amazing.

📍White Horse Tavern, Newport

This is the only restaurant in this list that I have not personally been to yet, but I had to mention it here because of its historic significance. This is the oldest operating restaurant in the U.S. and the 10th oldest in the world, having served customers since 1673.

Vermont

📍Waterworks Food + Drink, Winooski

This upbeat and fun restaurant is located near the falls on the Winooski River, offering beautiful views all around. I like their unique ingredient combinations, which include things like wild mushrooms, gruyere cheese, and hazelnut crumbs. Their truffle fries are also really good.

📍Henry’s Diner, Burlington

I love a good diner, and Henry’s delivered on every count during my trip to Burlington. Their portion sizes were generous, the staff was friendly, and the food came hot and fast. It’s a popular place, so I recommend arriving as soon as they open to avoid a long line!

📍The Cafe HOT, Burlington

If you’re craving a good breakfast sandwich, you must go to The Cafe HOT in Burlington. Their Secret Biscuit Sandwich is incredible. They make their biscuits fresh in-house, and their pickled red onion sauce is out of this world.

FAQs

Here are answers to other common questions about food in New England:

What is the most popular food in New England?

Seafood! People gravitate toward anything that comes from the sea. I’d say clam chowder, lobster rolls, and oysters are three of the most popular seafood items, but you’ll find a host of options to choose from across most New England restaurants.

Why are seafood and fish so common in New England cooking?

New England’s proximity to the Atlantic Ocean makes it a hotspot for seafood. The waters of the Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound are filled with fish and shellfish of all kinds. 

While other parts of the U.S. have to source seafood from coastal locations, New England has the benefit of getting the freshest seafood right on site. You don’t have to look far to find fresh catches of the day.