Without the pressure, rush, baseball caps and megaphone?
Wouldn’t you enjoy being the one deciding where to go, when to stop, what to look at?
Such a guide-less guided tour, and culinary no less, is the brainchild of Emily Himmer. That is to say, it’s one of the many ideas she and her friend Michelle Van der Werff have come up with to benefit food and wine enthusiasts in Mallorca - residents and visitors alike.
The guide-less guided food tour is called Wine and Dine and is an online app that will take you on a walk around Palma’s most picturesque areas, stopping at four of the city’s most iconic restaurants while dropping interesting titbits of information about the city.
“People want something real and genuine” Himmer explains. “They want to be their own guide and set their own pace. So we made an app (and it took ages to create!) to “walk” with them and let them be their own guide.”
Himmer had been working in the event industry for many years, organising teambuilding and corporate trips for up to a hundred clients, when she noticed people getting a bit jaded.
“Some of my event clients started mentioning that they were tired of sitting together with the same people at every meal,” Himmer says over a coffee in Santa Catalina market.
She saw an opportunity to start something new, and Food Tours Mallorca whose logo is a knife and fork ‘walking’ in shoes, was born.
With the people who were jaded and tired of the same faces in mind, she and Van der Werff created Walking Dinner, in which a group of strangers enjoy a three course dinner, each course in a different restaurant and sitting next to different people.
But a Walking Dinner is not the same as Wine and Dine where you are the guide; it is a kind of moveable platonic speed dating feast, a great way to meet new people over food, and to discover new and interesting eateries.
One of Food Tour’s many happy clients, the author Natasha Boyd, put it like this: “This is the most fun activity you can do in Palma to get to know the city, and its food. This walking tour is so well organised [...] We’ve done two tours (evening tapas and Sunday lunch) and discovered some real gems that we will be returning to! We also met some fab people and met new friends. Emily and Michelle are super knowledgeable.”
The website also offers – to the even more adventurous - Brunch and Ride. On this tour you zip around the Mallorcan countryside on an electric scooter, stopping for brunch in three different locations – all picturesque, that goes without saying. On this tour you have the option to book a local guide, but a living human being this time.
In addition to the pair’s latest and already very successful brainchild, Himmer still offers her normal event packages, where she does everything from booking the flights and picking up clients at the airport, to showing them what chair to sit on and what factor sun-cream to buy.
“The only thing I don’t do is weddings! That’s a special skill,” smiles the charming Himmer, waving as she walks out into the Palma sunshine, aglow with the entrepreneurial spirit.
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