Put on your fork-and-knife stilts and set out with today's side deal: for $25, you get a ticket for a food tour from Chicago Food Planet Food Tours (a $42 value). Choose from either the Near North tour or the Bucktown/Wicker Park tour. After checking Chicago Food Planet's tours schedule, follow these instructions to book your tour and redeem your Groupon. Tours require five-day advance booking; a two-week advance booking is required for Saturday tours.

Groupon users can scale the appetizing apexes of Chicago cuisine on one of two tours: the Near North Food Tour or the Bucktown/Wicker Park Food Tour. On the Near North tour, edibles enthusiasts will be guided through the Gold Coast, Old Town, and Lincoln Park neighborhoods, with savory stops at a pizzeria, a spice shop, a European bakery, a Jewish deli, a vinegar and oil store, a tea shop, and a chocolate-confection store. On the Bucktown/Wicker Park tour, food fanatics will be guided through the art-gallery–peppered landscape of these neighborhoods, with scrumptious sojourns to a hot-dog stand, a pastry and dessert restaurant, a gourmet grocery, a Middle Eastern store and deli, a pizzeria, and an ice-cream shop. Both tours are three hours long, and both tours include food tastings and samples (enough to make a lunch from).

Even if you're a native Windy Citizen who has eaten your way from Riverdale to Rogers Park, there's still plenty to get out of these food tours, with architectural anecdotes, historical highlights, and neighborhood narratives shared by the tour guide. Grab your bib and your walking boots, and plan your delicious discovery of local eats and sweets.

Reviews

ABC's 109 N., Bon Appetit, Time Out Chicago, Examiner.com, and the Chicago Sun-Times all recommend Chicago Food Planet Food Tours:

• On this guided, narrated walking food tour, you'll learn about Chicago's rich history and treasured architecture while sampling authentic flavors from ethnic eateries and food shops. After the tour, explore Chicago with confidence and take advantage of our full spectrum of cuisine, entertainment, and cultural offerings on and off-the-beaten-path. – Andrew Knowlton, Bon Appetit
• [The tour guide is] friendly and completely approachable, with a wealth of information both historical and architectural that reaches far beyond the constraints of a plain ol' food tour...I was surprised at how much I learned over the course of three hours. – Emily Szopa, Examiner.com

Yelpers give Chicago Food Planet a perfect five-star rating, and over 100 TripAdvisors give it 4.5 owl eyes:

• The pacing of this tour is obviously well-thought out. The tastings are interspersed with leisurely walks and informative talks not to mention the needed restroom break when it was needed. The tastings were all in small "mom and pop" type businesses...not chain stores. – ValRober, TripAdvisor
• Not only did I experience the culinary delights of this charming neighborhood and felt like I invaded the neighborhood's privacy by eating at all of their best kept secrets, I felt like a local... – Kathy D., Yelp