Lower East Side Bagel Tour

Enjoyable Walking History Lesson

Our tour of the Lower East Side with Ben was like walking the old neighborhood with your favorite Uncle. As a life long New Yorker, Ben shared historical facts and personal stories about the area and at all of our stops. He had photos of each of the stops in their hey day which added context and discussion. It was easy to find Ben at our designated start point and he communicated well prior to the tour. The pace was pleasant and efficient. I highly recommend this tour.

via Tripadvisor

Inaccurate description of tour.

I’ve waited 48 hours to write this review because I wanted time to reflect to make sure my review wasn’t a knee jerk reaction to our tour. I booked months in advance and was looking forward to a food tour so thought the ‘eat everything bagel tour’ would be a great tour for our family. Katz was on my list of places to visit and eat so I thought this tour would kill two birds with one stone. This tour was NOT what was advertised. The title wqs an eat everything tour. Whilst we were given a bagel in the street when we arrived, there weren’t any seated stops apart from the biali place at the end. My husband had to request multiple times if we could get a coffee and only near the end did that happen. When we stopped outside Katz we were told the queue was too long for us to go in. We were encouraged to look through the window and come back in our own time. We shouldn’t have been so British and should have insisted that we went in. I’m furious because we have come back and the queue is easily over 200 people whilst when we were here the other day there were only about ten people queuing in front of us. So so disappointing. I’m actually really angry about it. Ben should have asked us if we wanted to wait twenty mins (because that’s all it would have been) to get a takeaway but instead made us wait on the sidewalk whilst he told us all about Katz. There were many opportunities to make up any ‘wasted’ queuing time along the way. I know Ben will reply to this review and say it was described as a LES tour but I didn’t find the history to be very informative either. Just a description of local shops and how they have changed over time. There could have been a lot more facts and figures. Either advertise it as a food tour and stop at Katz or call it a LES tour. I feel like I wasted a lot of money and more importantly our time when it was at a premium on our NY trip. Would not recommend.

via Tripadvisor

Great, but not exactly what we expected.

We loved Ben and found the tour to be super interesting and informative. We expected a bagel tasting tour, and we did try some food which was all delicious! But it was more of a history tour of the LES than a bagel tour. I would do this tour again for personal fun, just might have done something different for a bachelor party.

via Tripadvisor

Horrible. Disaster

Avoid at all costs!!! Only 2/8 of places were open One of the places had been closed for years Not sure but seemed like a scam as the price was high

Response from the operator: I am sorry you had a bad experience. I find it strange that there were sites that were closed. I don't conduct tours when such is the case.

via Viator

Different than expected

We enjoyed the tour but the title is misleading. It says it’s a bagel tour, so we expected to go to several bagel places and try several bagels. That is not what happened. We tried a few different foods… pastrami, pickles, and one bagel. But it was mostly history of the Jewish history of the lower east side.

Response from the operator: Please note that that is the description of the tour. Jewish History of the Lower East Side with noshes along the way. I call it bagel tours because the bagel is the ultimate symbol of New York.

via Tripadvisor