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| - Am I a food snob? I don't think so but I suppose that could be one explanation for my dissatisfaction. There's no good way to put it - the food on this tour (or the food in Scottsdale for that matter) is just not up to the level that we're used to in LA.
I was VERY excited for this tour. I've been on 2 other food tours (1 in LA and 1 in Seattle) and both were fabulous experiences. In terms of the tour guide, I don't think Annie lacks any enthusiasm or friendliness compared to the other tours I've been on. In fact, one of my friends hurt her back and was having a hard time walking and Annie was well-prepared and had a wheelchair in her car that she let us use. She was one of the nicest people we met during our 4 day trip to Scottsdale.
That said, the food was so disappointing. The first stop was the Rusty Spur, where we were each given one slider. The bun was cold and the patty tasted like it had just come out of the freezer. At that point, I was still optimistic because who expects good food from a saloon anyway? Our second stop was Outrageous Olive Oils and Vinegars. It was cute little shop and my friend ended up buying some stuff from there. The third stop was Su Vino Winery. Obviously, I didn't expect amazing wine in Scottsdale but their best seller, Summer Rain, was not good. It was some sort of white wine that is far too sweet for normal consumption. The next stop was Frank and Lupe's Mexican food where we were each given a stuffed sopaipilla. It reminded me of the tacos you get at camp. The sopaipilla itself was cold and the filling was bland unless you put a ton of chiles on it. The fifth stop was Cowboy Ciao, which was the only stop where we ate something that actually tasted really good. I'm not sure what the item was called but it's some sort of polenta topped with pulled pork, cranberries, and other goodies. I wish there was more. We then made our final stop at the Sugar Bowl, where we each ate an ice cream cream puff. The pastry tasted really stale and it was hard to chew.
Beside the quality of food, there are a few other issues I had with the tour.
1) There wasn't enough food. If you think about it, we had 3 food stops, and 1 dessert stop. We ate nothing at Su Vino and Outrageous Oils and Vinegar. Each portion at a food stop was roughly the size of one street taco (you know, the ones you get from food trucks). I can eat 4 of those any day and I'm a girl. Now imagine eating what's equivalent to 3 of them but over a 3 hour period. You get the idea.
2) The sequence needs to be reshuffled. Since I was on the Sunday tour, we met up at noon. That means we didn't have our first slider until after 12:30pm. Then for the next hour, we ate NOTHING. The next food stop was stop #4, which was after 1:30pm. I was starving by this point and not in a very good mood.
3) The other food tours I've been on have been very good about keeping the tour separate from "shopping." Annie said at the very beginning that participants on the tour are free to order drinks if they desired and that she has seen people turn the food tour into a bar crawl. Um, I don't want to hang out with drunk people and I really don't want to wait for people to order their drink and sip it slowly while the rest of us are ready to leave. Again, the samples were the size of a street taco so you can imagine how quickly one could devour the food. Some people shopped at Outrageous Olive Oils and Vinegars during the tour and held us back. They really should have waited until after the tour ended to go back.
4) Annie made some recommendations for other restaurants as we were walking. She completely lost credibility with me when she said that Malee's Thai on Main is a "great" Thai place. OMG, I think it may have been the worst and most overpriced Thai food I've ever eaten. We had gone to Malee's the day before the tour and the Tom Kha Gai soup was thick and way too sweet and the Duck Curry tasted terrible. I guess the Thai food standard in Scottsdale is not very high.
There are 2 different routes for this tour and I can only hope that the other route offers a superior experience.
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