Seattle's Pike Place Market revealed in culinary tours

TWO YEARS ago, when I first heard about a new culinary tour launching in the Pike Place Market, I felt a little like a pit bull guarding its territory.

You see, I'd lived in the Market neighborhood for 17 years. I'd offered my own Insider's Market tours. And I'd written books on the subject.

So who was this interloper offering tours of my Market?

Turns out, Savor Seattle Food Tours founder Angela Shen is a passionate foodie who fell in love with the Market at first bite.

Coming from four-plus years in the "flat, flat and more flat" Midwest (Chicago), this former brand manager of PepsiCo and her husband moved to Seattle in late 2006 for his new job (at Microsoft) and for their shared love of winter sports. Early on, Shen spotted a need for a professionally run, food-related Market tour. The Pike Place Market: Greatest Hits Tour was born in July 2007. Next up came the Gourmet Downtown Seattle Tour and the Coffee Bites & Sites Tour. Just this May, the 28-year-old entrepreneur started offering the Pike Place Market: Off the Beaten Path Tour.

"My inspiration comes from giving people those 'OMG' or 'That's-the-first-time-I've-ever' moments," she says. Her guiding philosophy is to highlight foods and businesses that are FLOSS: fresh, local, organic, seasonal and sustainable.

On a sunny-cool Friday morning, I signed on for the Greatest Hits Tour, aka, the Classic. Led by Stephanie Jolly, a spunky young nutritionist, the tour began at the Starbucks store at First Avenue and Pike Street. After a dozen of us suited up with sleek adjustable sound systems, we picked up tour packets with maps and seasonal recipes, along with bottled water and paper napkins for sticky fingers.

Small cups of Starbucks' frothy caramel Frappucino fueled our move across the street and into the Market, where we stopped in front of DeLaurenti Specialty Food & Wine for a dose of Market history along with mini-cinnamon-sugar orbs from Daily Dozen Doughnuts. Over the next two hours, we munched and slurped our way through more than 20 samples including MarketSpice's orange-spiced tea, smoked salmon at Pike Place Fish and fresh fruit samples at Frank's Quality Produce. Jolly explained that the high stalls (such as Frank's) are large, permanent stands that sell local and global produce. Farmers sell only locally grown produce and craftspeople their handmade wares on the low, farm or day tables, which they rent daily.

At Chukar Cherries, we stopped for chocolate-covered nuts and cherries, trail mix and Cherry-Peach Salsa. Piroshky-Piroshky offered three types of the Russian pastries, while Beecher's Handmade Cheese served up its World's Best Mac & Cheese. Pike Place Chowder ladled out two award-winning, seafood-rich soups.

The gut-busting tour concludes at Etta's Seafood with mini-crab cakes and discount cards good for 10 percent off at the tour stops and other downtown businesses. Fast-paced and fun, the Classic offers a good overview of the Market and its food vendors for out-of-towners and locals new to the Market.

Call me crazy (my stomach certainly did!), but that very same day, I signed on for the Off the Beaten Path Tour, which promised a more in-depth experience with an ethnic bent.

Promptly at 1 p.m., with Shen as guide, we began at World Spice Merchants on Western Avenue with a discussion of cinnamon, garam masala and Chinese five-spice. Over cups of jasmine tea, we learned that the world's hottest chili pepper, the ghost, clocks in at more than 1 million Scoville units.

Across the street at the Spanish Table, George, the deli manager, pointed out the paella corner, where numerous paelleras (paella pans) were for sale, including a 52-inch, $800 model that serves 200 people.

"What is paella?" a young man asked as we tasted our way through Manchego-cheese wedges, chorizo slices, Marcona almonds and anchovy-stuffed olives.

"It's a rice dish typically made with chicken, seafood, chorizo, clams, pimentón and saffron," George replied.

"Oh, kind of like Spanish gumbo," the young man responded.

The afternoon's food epiphanies continued at Bavarian Meats, where lusty aromas of German sausage greeted us, not to mention samples of homemade liverwurst and landjaeger (similar to jerky). At Sweetie's Candy in the Market's often overlooked DownUnder section, we sampled chocolate-covered Gummi bears (!).

We also picked up packets of Chiclets in preparation for our next stop, the Market's world-famous Gum Wall. Hard to believe the Market Historical Commission ordered the dark bricks scraped three times before the gum graffiti became a sanctioned Market landmark.

A stop at Rachel the Pig (the bronze piggy bank that collects about $10,000 a year for the Market Foundation) was followed by luscious almond-paste-laden pastries at Svedala Bakery, which specializes in Swedish goodies.

Mulugeta (Mulu) Abate, the chef/owner of Pan Africa Market, discussed African food while we enjoyed vegetarian beans and lentils and spiced Ahi tuna rolled in injera, the spongy, slightly sour, fermented bread native to Ethiopia.

The tour concluded a few blocks up Pike at KuKuRuZa Gourmet Popcorn, which offers old-fashioned treats like Wax Lips and Bubble Up soda, plus 28 flavors of freshly popped corn.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but Shen's tours opened up new sights, sounds and tastes in my Market, and put a little bit of the puppy back in this old pit bull.

Braiden Rex-Johnson is the author of "Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining." Visit her online at www.NorthwestWiningandDining.com. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.