Ultimate London Food Tour Review [with WalksDevour]
A food tour is a great way to spend one of your first days in London. If you are weighing up whether it is worth the money to book a tour when Borough Market is free to walk around on your own, our answer is a resounding yes, and further down this post I will give you seven reasons why.
Discover what the WalksDevour Ultimate London Food Tour actually involves, including all six stops and what you eat at each, plus the practical details: how far you walk between the stops, where you can sit down, and access to the loo.
This review is based on my own experience of the tour (I have taken it three times) and covers the current route from Borough Market across to Leadenhall.
How the tour works
- Meeting point: 6 Tooley Street, SE1 2SY, outside Evans Cycles beside the Gateway Needle. This is a couple of minutes from London Bridge station, and the guide carries a red bag or a WalksDevour Tours sign.
- Finishing point: An award-winning wine bar in the City of London. Nearest station at the end is Bank.
- Length: three and a half hours.
- Group size: a maximum of 12. Ours was a group of four, which was me, my friend, and an American couple who turned out to be UK Travel Planning Podcast fans.
- Guide: ours was Ollie, who was chatty and informative.
- What is included: your guide, all six tastings, and the wine and cheese pairing at the end. There is nothing extra to pay on the day beyond a tip for your guide if you would like to leave one.
- Dietary requirements: WalksDevour can adapt the tastings for vegetarians and offer non-alcoholic alternatives, and they ask you to note any requirements or allergies when you book. They cannot accommodate vegans or coeliacs because of cross-contamination at the market stalls.
The six stops, in order
1. A British breakfast roll
The morning starts with a sit-down breakfast roll at a family-run spot that has been feeding the Borough since 1999. Bacon and egg in a floury bap. This is one of my favourite parts of the whole tour, and it is very good.
The moment worth watching for is everybody trying brown sauce. Many visitors to the UK have never come across it, and the reactions round the table are half the fun. Most people seemed to enjoy it, and I must admit it is an absolute must for me on a bacon sandwich.
You sit down for this one.
2. A sausage roll
After the breakfast roll, you walk into Borough Market itself, where Ollie talked through the history of the market and how it works.
Our next delicious food item was a sausage roll from one of the most well-known stalls in Borough Market.
In addition to its famous sausage rolls, there are other delicious options to check out (for a return visit) from what is one of the butchers behind the market’s 1990s revival.
The guide queues up and brings the sausage rolls back to the group, so you don’t have to stand in line (there is ALWAYS a line for these)
3. The best Crumble in town!
After a walk around the immediate area, taking in Clink Street, Southwark Cathedral, and where the Bishop of Winchester’s palace stood with its circular rose window still standing, the next stop is for the best crumble in town.
These truly are delicious, and they are as pretty as everyone says. Warm fruit crumble with custard and blowtorched marshmallows on top. Yum!
There is seating around the side if you would like to sit while you eat.
4. Fish and chips
Still within Borough Market, this is the stop many guests look forward to, and it delivers. Haddock in golden batter from a trader who has been in the market for nearly 30 years.
Ollie told us how fish and chips came to London in the first place. That is what makes a food tour so special. The food is good, but it’s the stories and the history behind every dish that you remember afterwards (though I can guarantee you may be dreaming of that crumble from the previous stop for quite some time!)
There is some limited seating available.
5. Something sweet at Leadenhall Market
Between stops four and five, you cross London Bridge. Ollie explained why the dragons are on the bridge, and the route then passes Pudding Lane and the Monument to the Great Fire of London.
At Leadenhall, the tasting is from a French patisserie known for something delicious and sweet – some would say merveilleux!
Leadenhall itself is a Victorian covered market and worth the stop on its own, and it will look familiar if you know Harry Potter films. It stood in for Diagon Alley in the first one, and it’s one of several Harry Potter filming locations in London within walking distance of the tour route.
6. Final stop – wine and cheese
The tour finishes at an independent wine bar tucked away in the City of London with a guided cheese-and-wine pairing.
The wines were excellent, as were the cheeses. It is a good place to end the tour, and we all enjoyed the relaxed cheese and wine pairings before saying our goodbyes.
Why book the tour when Borough Market is free?
It is a fair question, and one I asked myself before my first time. Anyone can wander Borough Market and eat well. Having now done both, plenty of times, here is what the tour gives you that a wander does not.
- Someone has already found the good stuff.
Borough Market has well over a hundred stalls, and on your own you are guessing. Every stop on this tour has earned its place, so you won’t waste money on a disappointing lunch or walk past the best sausage roll in the market without knowing it.
The route even changed this year as the market changed, which tells you how closely they keep on top of it.
- The stories are the difference.
On your own, you eat fish and chips. On the tour, you find out how the dish arrived in London while standing a few streets from where it happened. By the end of the morning you know why the market is where it is, what the ruins on Clink Street were, and why there are dragons on London Bridge.
- You skip every queue.
The lines at the popular stalls are long, and on a short London trip your time is worth more than your money. Your guide queues while you look around, knows where the seats are, and knows where the loos are. That alone can save up to an hour on a busy morning.
- The portions are planned.
Do this yourself, and you are full by the second stop. Six tastings, sized so you finish the tour satisfied rather than defeated, take more planning than you would think.
- You finish somewhere you may never have found.
The final wine and cheese stop is tucked away in the City, the kind of place you walk straight past without a local to steer you in. And your guide will happily tell you where else to eat for the rest of your stay, which we always find invaluable when we take food tours on our travels.
- It is a lovely way to start a trip if you are on your own.
A small group and a friendly guide are a soft landing on a first morning in a big city. On our tour, we were a group of four who were chatting like old friends by the second stop, and if you listen to our podcast, you may even meet a fellow listener.
- Dietary requirements are handled before you arrive.
Note them when you book, and the venues are already briefed, which beats interrogating a stall holder across a lunchtime crowd. Do read the dietary details above though, as there are some things they cannot cater for.
The route
The route runs from Tooley Street into Borough Market, loops around Southwark past Clink Street and Southwark Cathedral, crosses London Bridge, then continues into the City to Leadenhall.
That works out at roughly a mile and a half in total, spread across three and a half hours, so the walking comes in short stretches between stops rather than in one push.
A few things worth knowing before booking:
- Borough Market has uneven surfaces in places and gets busy, particularly later in the morning.
- There are cobbled streets and narrow alleyways on the route, and staircases at points along the way.
- London Bridge has a gradient rather than being flat.
- Leadenhall Market has a cobbled floor.
- The pace between stops was comfortable rather than brisk, and the stops themselves break up the walking.
- Wear shoes you are comfortable walking in.
Toilets: there are toilets at the venues along the way, and the guide will point them out for anyone who needs them.
WalksDevour also run this as a private tour, which is worth considering for a family group or anyone who would rather set the pace themselves.
Read more
- WalksDevour London tours
- Review: Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London
- Review: London in A Day Tour
- Review: Tastes, Tales and Traditional Ales Food Tour
- Review: Opening Ceremony at the Tower of London
- Comparison: London in A Day Tour Vs The Best of London Tour
- Best London food tours
We were hosted by WalksDevour on this tour. As always, our opinions and views are our own, and we only recommend companies we would book ourselves.
