Savannah was very appealing to me as a destination for one of my solo trips because of its incredible beauty and also because it’s one of the great foodie destinations in the US! How can you possibly go wrong with all the great Southern food everywhere you turn? You know I wanted to add to my growing collection of food tours I’ve attended, so a quick Google search led me to Savannah Taste Experience which has a few offerings for food tours. I booked two of them, and here is the first one! The First Squares tour focuses on the northwest corner of the historic district, and as you’ll see, the tastings cover a range of southern classics as well as other great items.
22 Square Restaurant | Andaz Savannah: Shrimp & Grits
Inside the Andaz hotel, you will find the 22 Square Restaurant right inside the spacious lobby. They have a great bar in the lobby, and a dining room just beyond some doors. This was the meeting place for our tour, and we got to sample some great shrimp & grits here. Our group was seated at the beautiful bar and enjoyed our tasting.
The bed of thick stone ground grits was topped with shrimp coated in a flavorful cajun compound butter sauce with ham and leeks. It was delicious and surprisingly filling for such a small portion. I mean, maybe not that surprising because Southern cuisine is known for laying on your chest.
Rhett: She-Crab Soup and Bloody Mary
Our next stop took us to our northernmost point of the tour near the river, to an eatery called Rhett on the ground floor of the Alida Hotel, and known for their coastal comfort food. What a gorgeous bar this was.
Here we enjoyed a tasting of their She Crab Soup which was incredibly silky and delicious. Along with the soup we were encouraged to try a drink off their brunch menu. I am not one to need too much encouraging, so I tried the Rhett Bloody Mary off their signature bloody marys menu. It was quite beautiful.
Of course in Savannah you can get any cocktail in a plastic cup TO GO! This is the magic of Savannah. Normally on food tours there is not time enough to enjoy a cocktail without screwing up the schedule, but of course in Savannah you can take it to go so nothing slows you down.
The Little Crown by Pie Society: Sausage Pie
Next, we headed over to City Market which is a lot more than meets the eye. Nestled inside the shopping mall is a miniscule British pub and pie house called The Little Crown which makes authentic British pasties and serves up some great cocktails like Pimm’s Cup and Butter Beer, or you can just get a Strongbow on tap.
We got to sample a great sausage pie which was delicious (and super hot!) The pastry was thick and flaky and buttery. Yum!
The American Prohibition Museum: Lime Daquiri
When I was at the airport waiting for my bag to come out, I was looking at the museums and attractions available in Savannah and the American Prohibition Museum really caught my eye. I thought that would be a place that looked super interesting, and what luck! Because a stop on this food tour happened to be just there! Specifically we went into the speakeasy bar at the museum, and like any good speakeasy, we entered through an unmarked door and I barely realized where we were until we came upon THIS:
The speakeasy section of the museum is just amazing, even though it’s separate from the rest of the museum. The cocktails offered are all vintage and served in gorgeous little 20s and 30s style glasses. We had a few minutes to wander around and look at the memorabilia all around the bar seating area. I especially enjoyed the section related to the early days of NASCAR and running moonshine out of the mountains.
The tasting at this location was a little sample of their lime daquiri which was good but very small. It did have a great flavor and I wanted to come back to the bar for a full cocktail but ran out of time in my trip.
Mint To Be Mojitos Bar & Bites: Chicken Empanada and Mojito
Carrying on, we headed down State Street, just one street south of Broughton. Mint to Be Mojito Bar & Bites is a cute little bar that focuses on hand-muddled mojitos but they also have other Latin American cocktails like caipirinhas and pisco sours.
Our tasting here was their wonderful chicken empanada. It was fantastic, and I really loved the garlic sauce it was served with.
One of the wonderful parts of this location is that we were offered a discount on trying their famous and namesake Mojitios. With the tour, you get $2 off the regular price of the $11 mojito, and any special flavors are just $1 more.
I got their Classic lime mojito to set the baseline for anything else. It was delicious and there was a whole sprig of muddled mint and lime crushed into this cocktail, along with a spear of sugar cane. There were so many leaves in it that it was kinda like drinking a shrub. A delicious shrub. And of course, it was served in a plastic cup so I could take it to go.
Savannah Bee Company: Honey Tasting
Lastly, our final stop took us to the Savannah Bee Company on Broughton Street for a dessert honey tasting. What a perfectly local sweet ending to this food tour!
Having never had a honey tasting before, I was pretty surprised at the differences in flavors between different honeys! We sampled two monofloral honeys (see? I’m picking up the lingo) which were Tupelo and Acacia and one Polyfloral mix. We also tried a whipped honey which is like a SUPER sweet frosting.
Sadly, it was right here at this point that my camera battery died at the end of the tour! I’m glad it made it almost to the end. Finally, as a parting gift, we were given a beautiful cookie wrapped to go.
Learn one fact with Savannah Taste Experience
Our tour guide, MJ, encouraged us at the beginning of the tour to learn at least ONE fact about Savannah. I took this as a personal challenge, and I’m happy to say that by the end of the tour I had definitely learned one solid fact that I had NO previous knowledge of. I’m not proud of the fact that I was ignorant of this before, but I’ll admit it here for the sake of honesty. I learned that Tupelo is not just a city in Mississippi……. it is actually a swamp TREE that grows along the Florida-Georgia line, and from hence we get the Tupelo honey. I literally never knew it was a tree. So yes! I actually learned something on this tour that as an adult I probably should have known!
In conclusion, I absolutely loved this tour of the Historic District of Savannah. It provided a great overview of the area as well as some quintessential dishes for the region. This was my first food tour that I’ve taken in the Southern US!
MORE FOOD TOURS
