If you’re looking for a unique experience during Moore County’s Peach Week, check out the Peach Week Foodie Tour. It’s a great way to learn about Aberdeen, NC and eat a bunch of peaches.
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We all know that famous song lyric, “Peaches come from a can.” But, residents of the Sandhills region would argue peaches come from Candor, NC, the Peach Capital of North Carolina, home of the NC Peach Festival, and a town just over the border from Moore County where Aberdeen is.
I bring this up because during Peach Week (which starts on the first day of the NC Peach Festival and continues for the next nine days), there’s a Peach Week Tour in Aberdeen, NC.
The tour features five stops, all of which have peach-centric food or drink items. The peaches in the recipes are brought in from Candor, so they’re authentic North Carolina Peach Capital peaches.
The tours are offered through Foodie Tours, a Moore County-based group. The tours are pretty similar every time you take them, although the locations can change at a moment’s notice due to the restaurant’s availability on that day. But, you’re always guaranteed to do five.
So, if you book this tour during Peach Week 2024, you may have a similar experience to ours. Or, it might vary. Either way, it’s the perfect way to try a bunch of Peach Week offerings without having to make reservations or have peaches with every single meal when you’re in town.
This Peach Week Tour is part of the Peach Week events in Moore County, NC, which are a piggyback on the NC Peach Festival in Candor. Find out more in our NC Peach Festival & Peach Week: Details & Full Schedule post.
Peach Week Foodie Tours: Everything you need to know
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If you’ve never done a food tour before, here’s a quick overview. You meet your tour guide at a designated location. In our case, it was the Union Station Railroad Museum. Once your entire group shows up, you’re off.
Some food tours will include a map with the names and a description of each of the restaurants you’ll be visiting. Some won’t. This time, we received a small rating card since the restaurants we were visiting were all participating in the CVB’s Peach Week Food & Drink competition.
Wear comfortable shoes because you’ll be walking from location to location. The distance will depend on where your tour is, of course. All of the restaurants we sampled on this tour were in downtown Aberdeen and within a few blocks of each other. While we were walking, our tour guides, Lin and Tori, pointed our murals and buildings and gave us a little history about the town.
Food Tastings Guide
We had five tastings, so let’s run down those really quickly, then go into more details about them.
1. Just Peachy Pizza at Pizzeria Grazia (101 N Sycamore St)
2. Peach French Toast and a peach martini at Mason’s Restaurant & Grocery (111 N Sycamore St)
3. Peach Crustini and Turkey Panini (with peaches) at The Bakehouse (120 N Poplar St)
4. Coffee at High Octane (140 S Sycamore St)
5. Peach Beer at Railhouse Brewery (105 E South St)
Tasting 1: Just Peachy Pizza at Pizzeria Grazia
For a lot of people, pizza is a religion. It’s dough, sauce, and cheese. That’s it. And for other people, pizza is a blank canvas that anything can be placed upon. If you’re in the latter group, the Just Peachy Pizza at Pizzeria Grazia, the first stop on our food tour, is for you.
Crust is topped with olive oil, goat cheese, peaches, blueberries, granola, and a drizzle of maple syrup.
It. Was. Delicious. If you think of it like a dessert rather than a pizza, it’s delicious. That little bit of maple syrup adds a sweetness that ties the entire pizza together. And the granola, although a little wild for a pizza, adds a little it of a crunch that balances the softness of the rest of the toppings.
Plus, because it’s Peach Week, there are huge peach slices across the top. This is actually the most peachy offering of everything we ate on the tour.
As a bonus, we did also get to try the Margherita al Crudo pizza because it’s a favorite of Tori, the founder of Foodie Tours who was on our tour. That pizza was topped with mozzarella cheese, prosciutto di parma, and arugula (the latter of which is my go to ever since I discovered it as a pizza finish at Blaze Pizza).
All the pizzas are Neapolitan style, which are actually meant to be eaten by knife and fork. But I’m a New Yorker, so I can’t do that. I picked up each slice and was able to eat it just fine with a little fold.
Small aside: If you can’t make it to Pizzeria Grazia for the peach pizza, you can try our Peach, Blueberry And Goat Cheese Pizza, which is a dupe of this recipe.
Tasting 2: Peach French Toast and a peach martini at Mason’s Restaurant & Grocery
My French toast enjoyment was ruined when I was in Union Gap, Washington. Jean’s Cottage Inn made the absolute best French toast I’ve ever had in my life and I’ve been on a quest to find a replica ever since (because Washington is really far to go for breakfast).
So when I saw the Brown Butter Peach French Toast on the menu for our next stop, Mason’s Restaurant & Grocery, I was super excited.
A piece of French toast was topped with a peach syrup, peach chunks, a dollop of whipped cream, and some powdered sugar. Plus candied pecans. Those pecans was one of the best things I ate all day (which, I kind of feel bad about saying because I’m sure they’re not made in house, but they were still delicious). I soaked up every bit of the sweet syrup with the French toast, which was very good.
The French toast was served with a peach martini (Tito’s vodka, Peach Schnapps, orange juice, a splash of soda, and a fresh peach slice garnish). My mom had that and enjoyed it and I got to have the freshly squeezed orange juice, which is the restaurant has become known for.
Tasting 3: Peach Crostini and Turkey Panini (with peaches) at The Bakehouse
Our last food stop of the day was at The Bakehouse, a European bakery started by fifth generation baker, Martin Brunner. The business started in the historic building it’s currently in in 2008 and was recently sold to the co-owners of another restaurant in Pinehurst.
What hasn’t changed, though, is the bread. And thank goodness because it was delicious. If you don’t know, it’s really hard to find good bread in North Carolina. So when you find it, you embrace it.
Lucky us that The Bakehouse served us two tasty peach offerings on really good bread.
The first was a Prosciutto and Peach Crostini with goat cheese and a hot honey drizzle (sort of like a combination of both the pizzas we had earlier). The cool goat cheese balanced the hot honey perfectly, so you got flavor, not spice. And the peach cubes topped with crunchy prosciutto in the center was great. I only wish there was more of that over the whole thing.
Then we had a Turkey Panini on a baguette with smoked gouda, smoked peaches, and a light peach-fig spread. The gouda stole the show (Marshall Eriksen would be proud; IYKYK).
Tasting 4: Coffee at High Octane
Three different options of peach drinks greeted us at High Octane, a coffee shop build in a refurbished garage, and the 2023 Peach Week Winner for best non-alcoholic beverage.
There was a hot peach cobbler (which was incredible and I could have used a full cup of that to take me out of the food coma I was falling into), an iced farmer’s market coffee (which was a combination of peach and blueberries and, unfortunately, not for me) and a Peachy Keen frozen lemonade (which was a hit for the group because it was hot walking around downtown Aberdeen in July).
Tasting 5: Peach Beer at Railhouse Brewery
Our last stop was Railhouse Brewery, a veteran-owned brewery in a warehouse setting just behind the CXR train tracks.
The company brewed a Pit The Peach, a wheat beer made with over 70 pounds of fresh North Carolina peaches for Peach Week. Last year, the peach beer sold out, so production was doubled this year. And, last year, the brewery was the 2023 Peach Week winner for best alcoholic drink.
Personally, I don’t drink, so the bartender made me a peach mule mocktail, which had a nice kick from ginger beer (which, yes, is a non-alcoholic soda). I always appreciate it when a brewery has mocktail options. Sometimes, people don’t want to drink because they’re driving. Or they’re just done drinking. Or they’re like me and just don’t like alcohol. So having a mocktail, which comes in a fancy glass and looks just like a cocktail, is a great way for someone to feel included and not singled out by a giant red soda cup filled with water.
Our food tour included another drink at the bar, although everyone declined. We had a great time eating and drinking our way around town for the last 2.5 hours and everyone was full. So we said goodbye to our tour guides and left.
Non-Peach Food Tours Near Moore County:
Peach Week in Moore County only lasts 10 days, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a Foodie Tour after that.
The company operates general, non-themed food tours during the year in Southern Pines, Aberdeen, Sanford, and New Bern. There’s also a Haunted Foodie Tour, where you can learn about the lore and ghosts in the area.
Foodie Tours NC: Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. You need to reserve your spot ahead of time on Foodie Tours NC’s website. Tickets for the tours are $79.
The tour lasted 2.5 hours (from 1 pm to 3:30 pm).
The limit for each tour is nine participants, plus a tour guide. Our tour had six of us, which was pretty impressive considering it was at 1 pm on a Thursday. Tours require four people at minimum to run.
Private tours are available.
Make sure you wear comfortable shoes. You’re walking for a good portion of the tour, so you want to make sure you’re comfortable while doing that.
When you’re not eating, you’re outside, so you want to dress appropriately. If it’s cold, wear a jacket. If it’s hot out (like it was when we went), wear shorts.
More Food Tours:
If you’re in the New York area, check out the Ahoy New York Food Tours. My dad and I took that tour through Manhattan’s Little Italy and Chinatown and had so much fun.
Have you done one of these Foodie Tours? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.