Your experience begins at our central meeting location where you’ll be welcomed by your professionally trained guide and introduced to the small group - including a tasting!
The tour spends approximately 30 minutes exploring Canada’s oldest Chinatown while enjoying multiple curated tastings from respected local culinary partners. Between bites, your guide shares the cultural history, architecture, and stories that shaped this vibrant district.
Don't just walk through Fan Tan - truly experience it with a guide to bring it to life through stories. This photogenic street is ripe with history and has a ton of hidden treasures that only a local guide can reveal. We of course will also taste some delicious food here.
Next, we transition into Old Town, walking through Market Square and along heritage brick streets. Over the next 45–60 minutes, you’ll enjoy additional chef-driven tastings — from globally inspired cuisine to elevated local favorites — while learning how Victoria’s dining scene has evolved over the past century.
The tour was amazing! Tasted a lot great food options, explored the city with just the right amount of walking, learned lots of fun history snippets about the city, and had a great time with the other tour participants. Brenda, our guide, was funny, knowledgeable and brought great energy!
Amazing food and cultural experience. Brenda, our tour guide, was exceptional. We were fortunate enough to be the only tour on this particular day, which means we got extremely personalized service. Everywhere we went, she enlightened us about the history of Chinatown and the diverse food culture. And every food stop was unique and memorable. This is a must-tour if you really want to get an inside look at hidden gems in Victoria’s Chinatown.
Brenda took us on a perfectly delicious food safari. We went to places we never would have found our own. We were delighted to have her to ourselves. Highly recommend this tour if you are in Victoria! Thank you Brenda’
Brenda was amazing, pure gold - amazing tastes, many surprises, but also astonishing knowledge on local (and global) lore. More than highly recommended, only five stars because more weren’t available
This was fun and informative and had a great variety of food.. iI appreciate that they accomodated dietary needs.
This delightful 2.5-hour tour was the perfect conclusion to a beautiful weekend vacation. While some may arrive with expectations, it’s best to leave them at the door. Our guide, Brenda, brilliantly highlighted Victoria Gaines’ insights on how diverse cultures create such a unique experience. Food truly is the perfect way to bring comfort and joy, all while making new friends along the way.
When visiting new cities we love booking tours. I read the reviews of Hip and Hidden hind town and food tour, and they got good reviews we paid $125.00 each plus tax for the privilege of having Erik escort us. Stop 1 - Mexican, had a lovely chicken taco not too big or too small. Stop 2 - 3 bacon wrapped dates on a skewer. I’ve never seen a date that small. Stop 3 - Indian restaurant, their take on poutine was a total failure. They had butter chicken over fries and maybe 3 curds. Complete mess. Stop 4 - 2 delicious dumplings. The interesting take on this was we were lead to a secret garden. Right beside garbage cans and recycling bins. We were seated at a make shift plywood table with bird dropping on it. Stop 5 - a bakery that served us a delious Thai bun. We took turn sitting at a small table to enjoy this messy wonderful desert. Stop 6 - A micro brewery, this place had a fascinating story as we sipped all of maybe 4 oz of beer. Stop 7 - a lovely marinated cube of chicken on a skewer, all two bites. The ad specifically stated to come hungry. The pertains were ridiculously small 5 of the 7 stops. Erik our tour guide who is a very gregarious individual completely dropped the ball. Between each venue there was little discussion and spent most of his time talking to an individual I can only describe as Mr. Pretentious Porsche. Half way through the tour we discussed if we could slip away as we both felt completely out of place and a 3rd wheel This was the worst tour experience we have ever had and I can’t believe we paid that much for it. I’d give them 0 stars if I could
Brenda was warm and informative. Our kids loved her stories and the food was amazing. These are spots that we wouldn’t have ventured by ourselves.
Fantastic tour. Brenda was amazing. Two of us were locals, one visitor and we all loved it. I discovered places I've seen but never entered.
We had an amazing day with Helen. She was great. We learned about he history of Chinatown and had some great food. Wonderful walking tour. So much variety, we ate our way around the world! I would definitely recommend it.
Excellent! So fun and informative. Brenda was so funny and engaging! Her humor was spot on!
Brenda did a fantastic job in educating us on Chinatown and the various eateries around. A great way to see some of the city and Brenda made it really fun. We had seven different types of food and drink and all were great. Highly recommended
Brenda Quinn did an amazing job. Super friendly, funny, and knowledgeable.
Helen was awesome. Knew her history and was very structured. Wife and I really enjoyed the tasty samples.
Helen was wonderful!! Food was great 😊
So much food! Such good variety and value!! Loved everything
There were many steep steps, mostly going up which serve as an impediment for people with disabilities. My wife had trouble with the steps. This should have been mentioned in the tour description. There was one theme common to almost all of the food: CARBS, CARBS, CARBS! Most of the samples were either completely carbs or a deep-fried crust surrounding the sample. There was almost no protein to be seen. The last 2 samples were a tasteless falafel (all carbs) and a sample of sushi with a huge wedge of rice with a tiny bit of seafood and seaweed. If we had to have carbs, we could at least been given samples of chocolate and ice cream.
Brenda was great; funny and informative. Excellent food stops. Highly recommend!
Brenda was awesome! A wealth of information and hilarious! A great variety of food provided with some truly unique items that I’ve never tried before. Nicely done!
Brenda managed to keep us all in - line which was a BIG job for our group:-) Lots n lots of good food and stories plentiful too!!!!
Brenda Quinn was wonderful! She was fun and told wonderful stories. Left with love and directions.
We had never done a walking food tour before, and I’ve now discovered my new favourite way to experience a city! We’ll definitely be booking with the Off the Eaten Track team again. The Hip & Hidden Chinatown + Old Town Tour took us to places we would never have thought to visit on our own. We loved learning about the city’s history, as well as the stories behind each location and eatery—it made the whole experience feel personal and memorable. Every stop offered an amazing selection of delicious samples. Helen was a fantastic guide and host for the city. She was knowledgeable, welcoming and so much fun, with a brilliant sense of humour. Thank you for such a wonderful experience!
Great food with a knowledgeable guide. Brenda was fun and informative. I really appreciated the experience and the extra time that she gave us to take photos.
Brenda Quinn was delightfully knowledgeable and made the tour a treat!
Very knowledgeable and delightful tour
Very good experience, good local info
Brenda is a foodie, info buff & hospitality pro! Do it your 1st day so you can go back to the places you tasted & some she mentions but weren’t on the tour.
Food was delicious with some unique flavors. And found an amazing umbrella shop too. Brenda was great tour guide - very entertaining
I wasn't sure what to expect, but this tour was wonderful! Helen took us to a variety of restaurants in the area and gave us history lessons about Victoria along the way. Come hungry - I had to take leftovers back to the hotel for later.
We had such a great time on this food tour! Brenda was warm, knowledgeable, and made the experience feel personal rather than like a typical tour. We tried some wonderful food while learning about the city, and offered gluten free options.
A lovely food tour with every food spot hitting the mark! Our guide Brenda was great and kept us laughing throughout as well as being super knowledgeable. Highly recommend!
Visited a variety of international restaurants. Brenda did a great job.
So much fun on the hip and hidden, found so many new gems to try out
Great food and restaurant selection. Entertaining guide with great stories that make the area feel personal!
Erick was a great guide and brought us to some incredibly delicious restaurants.
It was excellent! Super fun !!!
Awesome experience! Make us discover a bunch of new restaurants!
Brenda shared her deep personal connection and love for the culinary treasures of Victoria’s Chinatown and Old Town. The cuisine we sampled was like a world tour of tastes. At each location, Brenda was created warmly, and we were welcomed as her friends. She shared the origin stories of each restaurant, the owners and chefs. We gained an appreciation of the deep multicultural history of Victoria through the experience of this broad cross section of restaurants. And it is worth mentioning, the number, variety and size of the food servings was more than a full multi-course meal! The Off The Eaten Track organization is well represented by the quality of our guide, Brenda. I must also mention Eric, who responded to my anxious late night call and text asking for support after I mistakenly booked this tour twice. Eric calmly reassured me he would cancel the extra booking with a full refund, putting my mind at ease.
Great food, amazing tour guide, very knowledgeable and informative.
Can't recommend this enough. Our guide (whose name I sadly forget-has a 6 year old son and lived in the Philippines) was full of inside and entertaining information. I got such a different view of the area than I would have done on my own. The group size -5-was ideal and I tried places I would never have walked into.
This was an amazing tour that both locals and visitors to Victoria would enjoy. It was a lovely surprise to learn so much history about my home town. The tour introduced us to seven new local eateries that had great food and drinks. Our tour guide, Helen, brought a group of 6 strangers together and shared stories about Victoria, China Town history, and each of the eateries that we visited. This was a truly wonderful experience.
This was a great tour. Would highly recommend. Erik was a great tour guide and very informative.
Lots of great food. Helen our guide was knowledgeable and provided history of Victoria and Chinatown. She made the tour fun. All of the food was excellent. Really enjoyed the tacos, buns, and Indian food.
Excellent mix of history and culinary diversity.
What a delightful experience! Eric was knowledgeable, great personality, and wonderful relationships with all of the restaurants and their owners that we attended. I would recommend this company to anyone coming to Victoria for a wonderful experience. I can assume all of the employees with your company are of as high quality as he was!
My first food tour and boy was I impressed!! Eric was a fantastic guide! He was fun, knowledgeable and obviously very well known in Chinatown. Every one of the places he took is for food are places we would definitely go back to. I would HIGHLY recommend Eric and Off the Beaten Track !!!
Delicious flavors. Entertaining. Lots of good history. Would recommend this tour.
It was a great experience. Highly recommend taking this tour… food was awesome and Brenda did a great job of sharing the history.
Brenda was the best food tour guide we’ve ever had. She was so engaging and full of wonderful information. All the stops were delicious and we left with both our bellies and minds full of good stuff.
It was such a great tour with Brenda. She is so knowledgeable about everything. The food was amazing. Thank you.
Monday through Friday 9 am to 7 pm EST
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