A few weeks ago I was invited to explore the Gateway to the West Loop Food Tour by Chicago Food Planet. I’ve been wanting to explore more of Chicago and enjoy being a tourist in my own city – so this was a perfect opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.

Chicago Food Planet is the oldest food tour company in Chicago (founded in 2006) and offers tours in so many of Chicago’s neighborhoods. From River North to Chinatown there are tons of options. We went with the West Loop Tour and I got to bring Ted and my sister along which was a great perk!

We visited five sites and oh my lord was all of the food delicious! Mark was our tour guide and he was hilarious and very knowledgeable about West Loop’s history. Our group was a mix of folks from out of town and those local to Chicago.

We visited the following sites:

• Meatballs at Formento’s
• Mexican chicken sandwich at Cemitas Puebla
• Sliders at Kuma’s Corner
• Pizza at Bonci
• Donuts at Do-Rite Donuts

I’ll let these pics just speak for themselves – the food was amazing:

Here’s what I loved about the tour:

• The food – Outside of Do-Rite I hadn’t been to any of these restaurants before. And some of them I wouldn’t have even known to try. All items were picked out for you and they did a great job of appealing to all tastes!
• The food portions – nothing was too big or too small. In fact everything was just the right portion size that you could make sure you enjoyed and got to try everything without feeling too full. We left full and I didn’t even have dinner that night !
• The flow of the tour – it was a cold November day and we spent a little bit of time outside learning about the neighborhood and sites of interest. But we had plenty of time to sit at each restaurant and enjoy the food. Nothing was rushed and it almost felt a bit like a fun group hang out.
• Allergy conscious – they made sure to  accommodate food allergies, which I love and made sure everyone had a delicious sample to try

Any of the Chicago Food Planet tours would be a great thing to do when you have visitors from out of town. You can check out a listing of their tours here. A tour would even make a great gift idea for locals! How often do we really make time to explore our city? I don’t do this often enough and have my eye on the Chinatown tour next!

This post was sponsored by Chicago Food Planet but all thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you for reading and supporting My Petite Joys!