The Best Daytrip in San Francisco: Stretchy Pants Food Tours

By Emma Krasov. Photography by Yuri Krasov.

If you cruise ship stops in San Francisco so you have the entire day on land to explore, or if you’re coming to the City by the Bay for a conference or a family event, and seek entertainment in you free time, consider an excursion with Stretchy Pants Food Tours of San Francisco—a fun an educational activity that will take you a little closer to understanding our city’s foggy mystique, and will leave you excited about its rich history and indelible beauty. Not to mention you’ll be delighted by your tour guide’s wealth of knowledge and savvy presentation, amused by the local characters and quirky little shops, and most definitely well-fed.

Founded by Kara Ricciardi, a professional chef with an MBA degree, and later joined by Ruby Bielik, trained in international business administration, hi-tech law, and anthropology, the company behind the goofy name takes its business very seriously. Stretchy Pants—the namesake holiday pop song by Carrie Underwood—advises listeners to skip skinny jeans when going to a holiday party, and opt for stretchy pants instead. Same is true for a 3-hour food tour, where you’ll encounter the many expressions of San Francisco cuisine—a vivid mosaic of international influences and California bounty.

Stretchy Pants focuses on family-owned restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and bars, some catering to the city dwellers for 50 to 140 years, and delivers exhilarating experiences, filled with joy of new discoveries, fascinating stories, delicious bites and unusual drinks.

On a recent food tour, titled, Chinatown: Dim Sum & Tea Tour, our group of 10 (some cruise ship passengers from Texas, and some wedding guests from New York, and a couple of curious locals, wink-wink) gathered by the House of Dim Sum restaurant where we met our guide, Marcy Clark.

Food tours, no matter how much historical material they contain, and how many hidden local gems they are about to reveal along the route, must start with food—that’s an axiom. House of Dim Sum is one of the best places in San Francisco Chinatown for dim sum—a special menu of savory bites served alongside tea. As our guide informed us, this kind of cuisine used to be served to weary travelers since the Silk Road. The usual dim sum assortment includes steamed, baked, or deep fried dumplings and buns, plus tasty morsels of seafood, veggies, and meats, oftentimes supplemented by soy sauce, chili sauce, mustard and vinegar.     

Considered the oldest and largest Chinatown in North America, the Chinese quarter in San Francisco has been formed even before the Gold Rush era put our blessed city on the map. A simple bronze plaque at Portsmouth Square in the heart of Chinatown reads, “On this spot the American flag was first raised in San Francisco by Commander John B. Montgomery of the U.S.S. Portsmouth July 9 1846.”

The entire square, with its green lawns, flower beds, trees, benches, and a children’s playground serves as an outdoor gathering place for the locals who come here to indulge in various hobbies from playing table games to singing complicated arias from Chinese operas. 

All around it, alongside the main arteries of this part of the city, often decorated with red lanterns overhead, there’s a maze of 41 historic alleyways, full of wonderful surprises, like old temples, filled with a fragrant smoke of burning incense and auspicious red and gold ribbons; picturesque dwellings under pagoda roofs; secret doors and passages that in the olden days served as escape routes from illicit gambling houses; souvenir shops overflowing with shiny trinkets; lavish jewelry displays; medicinal herbs and spices kiosks; densely stacked tea houses; fish markets and vegetable counters; intricate statues and wall murals.

Led by our guide Marcy, we thoroughly explored the area on a well-paced walking tour with frequent stops at historic monuments, remarkable buildings, and interesting restaurants with multiple tasting offers. The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in operation since 1962, where we could observe the process of forming and folding the notorious cookie stuffed with a paper strip disclosing your fortune; Taiwan Fruit Tea Café, where we tried passion fruit green tea and a special latte with brown sugar [tapioca] pearls invented in-house; and Grant Place Restaurant, where we were seated around a table, topped with a lazy Susan loaded with Peking duck buns, vegetable stir-fry noodles, and spicy string beans, were just a few places visited on our route.

For a memorable finale to the highly informative and delicious tour, we indulged in a comprehensive tea tasting at a specialty store Vital Tea Leaf where we’ve learned how to identify and properly brew the many kinds of white, green, red, and black tea—prepared in from of our eyes and poured into our tiny cups by an excellent tea master/consultant.               

Stretchy Pants Food Tours crafts unique culinary experiences to highlight the flavors and histories of San Francisco. The company’s commitment to using food to connect people, tell engaging stories and celebrate local culture makes every food tour, led by knowledgeable and passionate guides, an interactive journey through family-run businesses, historic neighborhoods, and hidden culinary gems. With a focus on small entrepreneurs and traditional establishments, Stretchy Pants Food Tours provides an opportunity to discover the diverse and vibrant food scene of the city and glimpse the history that created it. Their dedication to quality and customer satisfaction has earned them rave reviews and multiple awards such as the Traveler’s Choice Award on Trip Advisor in 2023.

The company offers multiple public and private tours in different San Francisco neighborhoods every week. Find out more and make your reservations at: www.stretchy-pants.com.