This guide is built from the live tour page of Antalya Food Tour on A Chef’s Tour — price, start time, group size, tastings and dietary notes come straight from the operator, never invented.

What the Antalya Food Tours Are

Antalya is usually a beach holiday, and A Chef’s Tour’s pitch is that most visitors never leave the modern restaurants for the places that define the city’s cooking. It runs two small-group tours, both capped at eight guests, both US$99 per person, both 3.5 to 4 hours “depending on the pace of the group”, and both led by “one of our superb Antalya food hosts”: the Antalya Food Tour (lunchtime) at 10:30AM and the Antalya Food Tour at 4:00PM.

Both finish in or around the stone ramparts of Kaleiçi, the old quarter, but the menus differ more than the clock suggests. The lunchtime route is a pastry-and-cheese morning that ends with a smoky ice cream; the evening route is a street-food crawl that leans on çiğ köfte, soup and mezze.

How we wrote this: we are Joona and Alla, family travellers based in Rovaniemi, Finland, and we have not taken either tour. We read the live tour pages, compare the facts and send readers to the tours that hold up, so everything below comes from A Chef’s Tour’s own pages.

What You Eat at Lunchtime

The lunchtime page promises 14+ tastings and names, in order:

• A deli stop with artisanal Ezine and cave-aged Van-Otlu cheeses — both with Protected Designation of Origin status, says the page — plus sun-dried peppers, olives and the bittersweet peel of turunç oranges.
• A pastry shop open since 1930, where the third-generation family spin dough for serpme börek, served with Turkish tea.
• Piyaz, Antalya’s tahini-sauced bean salad (“a bean salad without tahini is an insult” to locals, the page says), with şiş köfte skewered meatballs and candied pumpkin, in the old Kaleiçi quarter.
• Tantuni, a dish from Mersin: finely minced beef or spiced chickpeas seasoned with sumac and rolled in lavash.
• Yanık dondurma — burned ice cream — in a wafer of halva, made with goat’s milk scorched in a copper cauldron.

That is about half the menu. The page is upfront that the rest stays secret. It is a more sit-down, shop-by-shop route than the evening tour, with cheese and pastry doing a lot of the work.

What You Eat in the Evening

The evening page promises 12+ tastings and calls it a “nightly moveable food feast”. The named dishes:

• Çiğ köfte — hand-kneaded bulgur patties with isot pepper, wrapped in crisp lettuce.
• Şiş köfte with piyaz, “the legendary culinary marriage”, then ayran yoghurt drink and wheat-flour halva.
• Kelle paça, a collagen-rich soup of head and trotters that “night-owls swear by”.
• An eighty-year-old family establishment, now in the hands of its third generation of cooks, where you tear flatbread into fava purée, cayenne-spiked atom yoghurt, the walnut-and-tahini blend hibeş and a tomato-and-pepper salsa called acılı ezme.

Kelle paça is the dish to think about before booking: it is offal, it is named on the page, and it is not for everyone. The rest reads as a vegetable-and-grill street menu with more spice and more mezze than the lunchtime route.

Lunchtime or Evening: Which Antalya Tour to Book

We would choose by what you like to eat. The lunchtime tour has two more tastings, more cheese and pastry, and the ice cream finish; the evening tour has more grill, spice and soup, and a start time that suits people who spend the morning at the beach or museums. If you are cautious about heat, the 4:00PM start still catches the afternoon sun for the first hour or so. Because the dishes differ almost entirely, doing both is not repetition on a longer stay — although at US$99 each, few people will.

Price, What's Included and the Child Policy

Both tours are US$99 per person with “no hidden charges”. The pages list:

• 12+ or 14+ food tastings
• Bottled water
• A local food host
• A group of no more than eight

The pages give no street address, so the exact meeting point comes with your booking confirmation. Getting there and back isn’t included.

Children: ages 3–12 pay half price and infants aged 0–2 are free. Two adults and two children aged 3–12 come to about US$297; the booking page shows your exact figure.

It’s a lot of money for a snack crawl and we don’t pretend otherwise — Bangkok’s tour is US$59 and Hanoi’s US$45 — so the question is whether 12–14 tastings with a local host in an old quarter replace a meal and a half-day of research for you. For a short stay, we think they do. For a long beach holiday where you’ll eat out every night anyway, it is a luxury.

Dietary Needs: What A Chef's Tour Actually Says

The notes differ by tour, and “possible” is not “suitable”.

Lunchtime tour

• Lactose intolerance: “Possible, though lactose is in 1-2 tastings with no alternatives available. Butter is used in 5-6 tastings where there are traces of lactose.”
• Pescatarian: “Possible, though meat is used in 3-4 tastings with no alternatives available”.

Evening tour

• Lactose intolerance: “Possible, though lactose is in 3-4 tastings with limited alternatives available”.
• Pescatarian: “Possible, though meat is used in 1-2 tastings with no alternatives available”.
• Seafood / shellfish allergy: “Seafood is not typically used in any of the tastings”.
• Tree nut / peanut allergy: “Possible as nuts are only used in 1-2 dessert tastings. Possible for mild allergies only, as there’s a risk of traces”.

Vegetarian, vegan, halal, pork and gluten are not listed for either Antalya tour — A Chef’s Tour doesn’t list them, so ask before booking (info@achefstour.com). The named menus include lamb, beef, offal and cheese, and the lunchtime menu is cheese-heavy, so lactose-intolerant guests have a harder time than the one-line note suggests. For severe allergies, no street-food tour can promise an allergen-free dish.

With Kids and in the Heat

Antalya is hot in summer and the routes are on foot through old stone lanes, so the practical notes matter more than usual.

• Start time: the 10:30AM tour finishes at about 2:00–2:30PM, so the last stops fall in the afternoon heat; the 4:00PM tour finishes at about 7:30–8:00PM, when it is cooler.
• Food for children: köfte, pastry, ice cream, flatbread and cheese are all on the named menus; spiced piyaz, offal soup and cayenne yoghurt are not. Ask the host about spice levels at the start.
• Ice cream: the “burned ice cream” finish on the lunchtime route will probably be the highlight for younger eaters.
• Buggies: Kaleiçi has steps and cobbles; we would choose a carrier.
• Water: bottled water is included; bring a hat and sun cream.

Half price for ages 3–12 is fair if your children eat about half a portion; infants are free. We’d choose the lunchtime tour for a family with young children and the evening tour for teenagers.

Why a Guided Tour in Antalya at All

Like many old quarters, Kaleiçi is easy to wander and easy to eat badly in without knowing where to look. What the pages claim a tour changes is access — an eighty-year-old family restaurant, a pastry shop open since 1930 and a deli with PDO cheeses are places you could find alone, but probably wouldn’t order from properly — and context, with the host explaining what piyaz is, why it is Antalya’s dish and what the Mersin tantuni is doing here.

Against that: at US$99 you pay for both, and a simple meal at a local eatery would cost a fraction of that. If you’d rather spend money on a boat trip or the ancient sites, skip it. If you want a half-day of local eating with a host, the tour is a fair deal.

How to Book the Antalya Food Tours

You book directly with A Chef’s Tour on achefstour.com — we never take payment. Open the Antalya Food Tour (lunchtime) or the Antalya Food Tour through our link, pick a date on the live calendar, add adults and children and pay. Confirmation is instant and the meeting-point details come with your booking.

• Book early in your stay, since groups cap at eight.
• Flag diets and allergies when booking, and email info@achefstour.com about anything the pages don’t cover.
• Nine or more, or a private tour? Contact A Chef’s Tour directly.

Cancellation, from the tour pages: “You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance of the experience for a full refund.”

We are an A Chef’s Tour affiliate and earn a commission on bookings made through our links — it does not change the price you pay.

FAQ

Our Honest Final Word

Is the Antalya food tour by A Chef’s Tour worth it? For a short-stay visitor who wants a half-day of local eating led by someone who knows the old quarter, we think yes — with the honest caveat that US$99 per person is a premium price for a city where you can eat well for less. The tours give 12–14+ tastings in a group of eight, in places the pages describe as family-run, decades old or both. The trade-offs are real: dietary notes are thin, offal appears on the evening menu, and a family of four pays about US$297. We haven’t walked either ourselves, and we send readers to them because the facts on the pages add up.

Book the Antalya Food Tour (lunchtime) for cheese, pastry and ice cream or the Antalya Food Tour for the evening crawl. If you’re travelling on to Istanbul, the Istanbul Food Tour has the same price and a ferry across the Bosphorus; the Cairo Food Tour costs US$49 per person.