Food - walking tours

When I bought the New York Pass, one of the things that appealed was the Food on Foot tours. However, the long-winded, shouty emails, telling me what their tour wasn't was very off-putting, as was their reponse when I attempted to paraphrase the booking procedure (cut-and-paste another long-winded spiel about what they do and don't do). In the end, I told him "forget it". Turns out there are plenty of other tours that include food for the same or lower cost - no wonder he's so defensive.

But I still rather like the idea of a walking tour, sampling foods and getting a feel for the place from a local.

One of the options I'm considering is the Central Village/SoHo tour from Foods of NY. This tour includes tastings from a focacceria, Masala Times (indian street food), an Italian restaurant (probably pizza), a Cuban restaurant, a fromagerie, a schwarma seller and a patisserie. ($47, three hours, 12pm, 12:30pm limited avail)

All the tours at Walking Tours Manhattan seem to include pizza as one of the courses. Even though the idea of starting a meal with a cupcake is unappetising, I'm still interested in the Greenwich Village tour, which also includes a bagel with cream cheese, an Indian vegetable roll, tomato-and-mozzarella pizza from Joe's Pizzeria, finished off with a cannoli. ($34, two hours, Mo-Sa @11:30am).

City Food Tours also offers a bunch of daily tours, including the NoLIta tour, which also allows you to learn how the foods are made (bonus gold star) while munching on goodies. On the downside, the foods potentially on offer as less exciting, and I know how most of them are made anyway. ($46.50, two hours, from noon, or 3pm, depending)

Perhaps the strongest possibility is with NoshWalks, which seems to run a wide variety of tours, which may  not be quite as touristy and/or well-planned as the others. One of two tours running while I'm there is the Upper West Side tour, which includes Ethiopian, Indian, Cuban, Ecuadorian, Haitian, Hungarian, Dominican and Mexican. (11:30am, Sat 23 Apr, $49, three hours).

In fact, I think I might book that last one - the downtown ones I can mostly find on my own, I reckon.