Culinary Backstreets, the global leader in narrative-driven food tours, has expanded its footprint in South America with two new full-day experiences. Backstreet Bites of Buenos Aires: Cafés, Parrillas and Beyond launched on September 10, 2025, while Discovering the Culinary Soul of Old Rio debuted in May. These immersive walks offer travelers a deeper understanding of each city’s culinary identity—one shaped by migration, improvisation, and the unsung heroes of the kitchen.
In Buenos Aires, the Backstreet Bites of Buenos Aires: Cafes, Parrillas and Beyond traces the city’s layered food story across historic cafés, bodegones, bakeries, and parrillas. Guests sample flaky medialunas, empanadas, and towering platters of grilled meat, while exploring how immigrant flavors—from Italy, Spain, Syria, and beyond—have converged into a distinctly Argentine table. Stops include a century-old spice shop, a classic pizzeria serving fugazzetta, and a hidden cellar beneath a flower shop where the menu nods to the city’s port-city past. The day ends with helado swirled in dulce de leche—Argentina’s most beloved flavor.
The Buenos Aires tour is offered Monday through Saturday for small groups of 2 to 7 guests. It spans approximately four miles of mostly flat terrain with well-maintained sidewalks. The cuisine leans heavily toward meat, with limited substitutions available for vegetarians and pescatarians. Vegan and gluten-free diets cannot be accommodated. Alcohol is served at select stops. The experience lasts a full day and is priced at $135 USD per person.
In Rio de Janeiro, Culinary Backstreets introduces Discovering the Culinary Soul of Old Rio, a walking tour that traces the city’s food story through its oldest neighborhoods. The experience begins in the port zone, where Portuguese colonists first arrived and enslaved Africans were brought to Brazil. Guests explore the historic downtown and surrounding areas, tasting feijoada, moqueca, and tropical fruit juices while learning how Afro-Brazilian communities preserved culinary traditions under oppression and how immigrant groups—from Lebanese traders to Japanese farmers—added new layers to the city’s foodscape.
Stops include Rio’s oldest café, a bustling open-air market, and the restaurant of an Afro-Brazilian chef reimagining Bahian classics with contemporary flair. The tour also explores the role of food in cultural resistance, from samba’s origins in backyard gatherings to the rise of community kitchens in favelas. Offered Tuesday through Saturday, the experience lasts approximately 5.5 hours and is priced at $135 USD per person. The route winds through roughly four miles of flat, walkable terrain, with occasional uneven surfaces in historic districts.
Both tours embody Culinary Backstreets’ founding ethos: that food is not just sustenance, but a living archive of migration, memory, and resilience. Rather than spotlighting trendy restaurants or celebrity chefs, the company seeks out the unsung heroes of the kitchen—those who have preserved culinary traditions through generations, often in the face of economic hardship or cultural erasure. These are the bakers, grill masters, spice sellers, and street cooks whose stories rarely make it into guidebooks yet define the flavor of a city.
“We don’t just eat—we listen, we learn, and we honor the people who make a place taste like itself,” says Ansel Mullins, co-founder of Culinary Backstreets. “These new tours in Buenos Aires and Rio aren’t just about food—they’re about the soul of a place, told through the hands that feed it.”
For travelers seeking more than a checklist of dishes—for those who want to understand how food reflects history, identity, and resilience, Culinary Backstreets offers a deeper taste of South America. These new tours invite guests to walk, listen, and eat with intention, guided by voices that rarely make it into guidebooks but define the flavor of a place.
