Eat Like a Local Foodie Tour in Cape Town

Offering clients a leisurely walking tour, the Eat Like a Local tasting experience includes a variety of food and drink tastings around central Cape Town, from the more popular to the obscure and from traditional cuisine to modern. Walking is not strenuous but it is recommended that guests have a moderate level of fitness.

Tours are offered on a scheduled or a private basis and a vegan option is available. The meeting point is at Mustaccio Café on Kloof Street. The departure time is 09:30 (starting in August 2019) from Tuesday to Saturday and the tour takes approximately 4.5 hours.

Jene recently joined an Eat Like a Local foodie tour and shares her experience below:

After spending more than 10 years working in the banking sector in JNB, Rupesh Kassen ditched the corporate world and qualified as a chef. He worked in restaurants in Johannesburg and Zanzibar and later became a freelance food critic writing for amongst others, the Eat Out Guide. After moving to, and falling in love with Cape Town, he set up Eat Like a Local to share his experience of the city’s vibrancy and rich variety of flavours with visitors. In addition to being a chef and a self-confessed travel addict, he is also a qualified and registered tour guide with a real insight into the Cape Town’s hidden gems and an insatiable appetite for food. He is energetic, enthusiastic, hip and happening.

My feedback in summary:

An excellently curated selection of local foodie spots – from the more popular to the obscure, from traditional cuisine to modern, single-dish restaurants, Rupesh has his finger on the pulse when it comes to the city’s top eateries and dining trends. Not only is his tour laden with loads of tasty treats, it is also delivered with a great deal of passion, insight and enthusiasm! Rupesh has a genuine love for food and culture and I would highly recommend his tour to those who enjoy exploring a city through their taste buds and stomach. His guided walking tour will help you get orientated, offers invaluable local insight and most importantly, fills your mouth with unique delicacies that you might not have known about otherwise! To top all this off, Rupesh is a foodie writer for a well-known local publication and will even share his insider tips on his most favoured hang-outs in the Mother City. He is a proficient guide and his tour is well-thought through in terms of routing and places visited, with very little time in between to rest the belly! One of the best ways to experience and understand the multifaceted and vibrant cultures and trends in the city.

Important info to note:

• Rupesh currently operates his scheduled Eat Like a Local Foodie tour from Tuesday to Friday. Private tours are on request  but Rupesh doesn’t employ any other guides (at the moment) so availability will be an issue on a private basis.
• His product is innovative and constantly changing to keep up with foodie trends – he has a foodie tour, specially crafted for Vegans and is also launching a ‘Cook with a Local’ tour soon which is a series of events, cooking with local restaurants where guests can get behind the scenes and into the kitchen for a more ‘hands-on’ experience.
• If you have hip clients looking for a evening guide to give your guests access to some of the city’s cool bars and speak-easy’s, Rupesh also plans to launch a scheduled evening ‘pre-dinner’ tour of the underground bars and his favourite watering holes of the city! This is still a work in progress so stay tuned. . .

They key differences between Eat like a Local and Cape Town Eats:

• One of NF’s most popular foodie tours, Cape Town Eats is a day tour where you’re collected from your accommodation by your guide and driven to the start point. The day is mostly a full day – starting around 9 and finishing up at 3pm. You can also choose to extend the tour to a full day by adding on Table Mountain.
• Eat Like a Local is purely a walking tour – with a meeting point on Kloof St and around 4.5 hours only.
• Although both are foodie orientated, Cape Town Eats focuses on the more traditional with its cultural heritage, while East Like a Local is a little more current, focusing on food trends, artisanal hot spots and some of Rupesh’s favourite hangouts.

There are definitely similarities and we suggest Cape Town Eats for the more traditional client looking for a city tour with a historical and food focus, while Eat Like A Local is great for the more independent client or adventure-seeking food lovers looking to understand a little more about Cape Town’s current food trends and their cultural influences.