Went yesterday with my daughter and that is what made things great. Time spent together. She is 24 and I am her mother and I am a Georgia born girl although I have lived all over the world. My girl was born in South Carolina where we lived for 10 years in Charleston so we do know Southern cuisine. Avila (the tour guide and Joy ), the other guide) are intelligent and articulate story tellers. We learned everything needed to know about the civil rights movement which was so informative. Atlanta has a lot of other history as well and much of it was left out. No Olympics, no Jimmy Carter...well, I could go on and on, but I understand that you can only say so much in a limited amount of time. I actually lived during these times and could have disclosed a lot about sitting at the lunch counter as a white woman, but they had the speech down to a fine art and I did not want to interrupt the flow. I think your tour's success has a lot to do with the group you are with and our group were completely non verbal. No amount of attempted engagement would get these people to speak. Nobody's fault.
Paschall's was the best food and the only hot dishes we had all day. Everything was good although I thought a fried okra or black eyed pea, fried green tomato or succotash would have been a better representative of true Southern food, but hey, this isn't my tour.
Every other place served cold food and try eating cold collard, mac and cheese, hoe cake and navy beans. Just not good. Tasty, but so cold that most of the tour didn't eat much. The guides leave you alone while you are eating so they don't really know what, if any was eaten. Get it hot and I think you will have a big hit on your hands.
My only real complaint is when we went to the Alden Juice place on the tour. What it had to do with Southern Food, I don't know, but am open to anything. The guides stood up and gave a lecture on the importance and health benefits of these juices and while I am positive they are correct, I just didn't choose to partake. I am a health professional and an over 21 year old adult who paid for this tour and a "no Thank-you" should have sufficed. Instead they singled me out and repeatedly badgered me about not trying them. Really? I am not five years old. I tried to use humor to blow them off, but they would not give it up. They singled me out and embarrassed me in front of the entire group. I laughingly said "I don't do shots" and they explained to me like I was an idiot that there was no alcohol in them and I then said I don't do little sips in small glasses and these ladies kept on and on and on like I was just ignorant. I just wanted them to get away from me.
I tipped them 20 bucks and didn't see anyone else do so (hope they did), but it has been a long time since I have been so annoyed. In my day, nobody would have treated an elder that way. Give it up ladies. I don't drink coffee, or soda either. I believe I can make my own drink choices without a lecture. Having said that, the moonshine cocktail at Smoke Ring was the best thing I had all day.
It's good history tour, the food need some tweaking.