By Sandi Masori
SAN DIEGO— If you drive through Little Italy around 4pm or so, you may notice a little group of people avidly listening to a guide as he tells them history and anecdotes about the region. You may wonder, how much is there to learn? Or why are these people milling about on the street when there’s so much good food around? Fear not, if the group is with Taste of San Diego Food Tours, over the course of three and a half hours, they will be entertained, educated, and very well fed.
Anthony Davi has been leading tours in Little Italy in one form or another for 26 years. As a resident and member of the community, he knows everyone’s stories and history. And most importantly, he knows every restaurateur, their stories, their history, their best dishes and everything else. How does he gain all this knowledge to bring into the tours? Well he interviews the chefs before adding them to the rotation. With over 30 Italian restaurants in the Little Italy area, Anthony says that he has to rotate the restaurants regularly to keep it fair.
One of the interesting anecdotes we learned was that Little Italy was established in the 1880s when Italians immigrated to what was then called Middletown. They were drawn by descriptions of a perfect harbor. But the area really exploded after World War I, when the commercial fishermen switched from fishing for sardines to fishing for tuna. Then they went to Sicily and recruited tuna fishermen to help out. Over 2,000 people came over. At the time, 80 percent of Little Italy worked in the tuna industry- the men fished and the women worked in the canneries.
When I went on the tour, we visited four establishments starting with appetizers and working our way through dessert. Before going on the tour, they checked for food restrictions. Because I don’t eat pork or mushrooms, he made sure that I had options that were pork- and mushroom-free, even if the rest of the group were eating dishes that included them.
All the food was excellent, but there were a couple of dishes at the first restaurant, Davanti Enoteca, that were dream worthy. I was especially excited about them because they were dishes I would not have thought to order on my own. The first was a recipe from 1060 AD for a thin stuffed focaccia bread that was stuffed with three cheeses and paired with fresh honeycomb… YUM!
The second was a vegetarian polenta made from cream and corn and topped with vegetables in a tomato base-incredible!
The rest of the group had a version with a pork in the tomato base on top, but those who tried both said the vegetarian version was much better. I’ve never been excited by polenta before, but this dish was phenomenal. They also had Roman artichokes, which are similar to Jewish Roman artichokes except they’re cooked in soup stock instead of oil (or something like that). Either way they were delicious.
From there we went to another restaurant, Solunto, where they are known to make a special kind of bread in the Salento style. There we learned about the one-of-a-kind world-class bread oven that they have. The bread was incredible, as you would expect.
Dessert was from two different places- Anthony got a couple types of traditional cookies for us from Filipis’ which in addition to being a local Italian restaurant chain, also includes the oldest Italian grocery store in San Diego. Then after that, just in case our sweet tooth wasn’t satisfied, we also got gelato from Zucchero.
While you might be walking all over Little Italy, in this tour you’re tasting much of Italy as each restaurant has a different region that it represents, Anthony shared with me that he builds the menu for the tour looking for a few things from each restaurant; he’s looking for things that are special to that place, different from the norm, something that people like, something that they’ve probably never had before, something that Anthony personally likes, and something that’s special from where the owners come from. The proof of the formula is in the tasting. Even though it’s just a little bit here and a little bit there, you end the tour feeling very full.
While Anthony was running corporate tours for years, it was only in 2018 that he joined up with Food Tour Corporation, a company that I have to share, in full disclosure, is co-owned by my second cousin once removed (or something like that). My relative, the former Sharone Goltz, and her husband Jeff Swedarsky, started running food tours in 2008, first in their hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, and then expanding out across the country. From those humble beginnings they are now in 27 cities (San Diego was the 20th city they went into.) They look for operators like Anthony who may already be doing tours but are struggling or need help with the corporate structure.
For Anthony’s part, he was looking for a bigger partner who could do some of the corporate tasks he couldn’t do. And so a beautiful partnership was born.
They are now the largest food tour company in North America, and just were named the #2 food tour in America in 2022, and the Little Italy tour was named by trip advisor as the #4 food activity in all of San Diego.
The tours run Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Tuesdays will also be added soon. It’s a great staycation activity if you have an evening free, or if you have out-of-town visitors, it’s a great way to show off some of our city and food, and get a light-hearted education into the history of one of our oldest neighborhoods.
For more information on the Little Italy tour, which costs $89 per person, visit: www.tastesandiegofoodtours.com And for more info on the other cities visit www.ftc4lobe.com
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Sandi Masori is a food and theatre reviewer for San Diego Jewish World. When she’s not covering food or theatre, she helps authors self-publish, hangs out with her kids, and searches for the best sushi in town.