The day before the Turkey tour began a tour member told us a guide associated with Rick's tours was going to take people around Istanbul for a day to sample restaurants and street food. It was a great experience and a good meal together with other tour members before we got started the next day. But we only heard about this by chance in the hotel lobby. So:
Is there a possibility of such a foodie tour before the Spain in 14 days 4/8/27 - 4/21/27 tour starts in Barcelona?
I've done more than a dozen RS tours, and have never heard of a pre-tour food tour.
I have, however, often arranged to join a food tour on arrival in a tour city. That might be your best bet.
I believe that the foodie tour in Turkey is unique in that it is run by SRM Travel, Rick Steves’ partner in Turkey. (I took it and it was fun and delicious.). However, if you want a food tour before your RS tour, there are many companies that run excellent food tours all over Europe. Here are two of them:
Eating Europe: https://www.eatingeurope.com
Secret Food Tours: https://www.secretfoodtours.com/
As noted the Turkey tour has a special pre-tour foodie tour offering, which if it is offered for your tour is specifically noted in the pre-tour information provided when you book the tour (it is kind of buried in there). You can look through your Spain tour info just to double check if there's something extra offered.
In addition to the tour companies already mentioned, check out Culinary Backstreets.
One more company:
Devour Tours: https://devourtours.com/
We enjoyed "The Barcelona Taste" food tour www.thebarcelonataste.com in 2022 before we started the R.S. Best of Spain. We loved the Best of Spain tour.
Last year we had three food tours set up with Eating Europe one in Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville. We love food tours and used Eating Europe twice in Rome with success. They are I believe Italian based. Of our 3 tours they cancelled two. Wanted us to go different days. We were also doing these pre or during our RS tour so had no other days. They cancelled without a lot of notice. We were able to get a Devour tour in Barcelona. It was very good.
Believe they started out Spain based now part of a bigger company.
The Madrid one we did with Eating Europe was very good.
We were unable to secure another tour for Seville.
Just be prepared for cancellations if you go with Eating Europe. Enjoy your trip
After 13 RS tours, never heard of an organized foodie tour before the actual tour started. We’ve done Eating Europe in Rome, Lisbon, Edinburgh and Berlin and never had them cancel. In Rome and Lisbon we did them on the second day of our RS tours where we had free dinner nights. In Berlin we did it the night the tour had ended in the morning.
All the tours mentioned above are good. have done them across Europe. We did Secret Food Tours in Barcelona (and on Mallorca) and I think is a late morning or lunch tour so is a nice way to walk the city and have a lunch!
