Want to hit midtown Sacramento farm-to-fork restaurants? Take a tour with this new company

Heather Fortes wanted to try everything in Sacramento’s farm-to-fork dining scene on the rare occasions she got to eat out. And she knew she wasn’t the only one.

That was the genesis of Sactown Bites, the food tour company Fortes founded last month. A Sacramento resident for the last 10 years, Fortes has partnered with five local restaurants for the three-hour walking tours: Magpie Cafe, The Porch Restaurant and Bar, Lucca Restaurant, Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates and Alaro Craft Brewery.

“I wanted to showcase restaurants that are really embodying that farm-to-fork mentality, where it’s not just a soundbite and a branding tool,” Fortes said. “It was about selecting restaurants that are serving locally-sourced and seasonal food, but also really partner up with local farmers or dig into fair trade and labor practices to source chocolate or coffee or have good labor practices in their own restaurant.”

Sactown Bites currently only offers tours on Fridays and Saturdays, both at 1:30 p.m., though Fortes hopes to expand to Tuesday through Saturday soon. She plans to add a second tour by the new year — maybe a downtown cocktail sampler — and a third by the end of 2020 after hiring employees and leaving her full-time job as a professional photographer.

Vegetarian options are present throughout. The Porch, for example, serves fried green tomatoes with remoulade and vegan bacon upon request instead of “pig-nays” (andouille sausage wrapped in beignet dough, fried and topped with powdered sugar and a fig-bacon syrup).

Tours are $79 per person ($59 for kids) or $99 with a drink pairing, and start at Magpie at 1:30 p.m. Most of Sactown Bites’ first customers have been Sacramento-area residents, though a few Bay Area day tourists (and one from France) have signed up as well.

Sactown Bites’ main competition is Local Roots Food Tours, run by Sacramento couple Dawnie Andrak and Tim Bailey since 2015. Local Roots offers three-hour tours in midtown (that Ginger Elizabeth, Magpie and Alaro also participate in) as well as downtown, the R Street Corridor and the Sutter District, with an East Sacramento tour coming soon.

This story was originally published October 29, 2019 at 5:30 AM.