What is Lost Plate?
Lost Plate is a tour company offering small-group food tours and multi-day trips across China, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Oregon, USA. Our goal is simple: help travelers experience a destination through its food at places they’d never find on their own, where locals actually eat.
What makes Lost Plate different from other food tours?
Most food tours focus on showing you what’s famous. Lost Plate focuses on showing you what’s worth eating. For over a decade, we’ve researched destinations, built relationships with restaurant owners, and refined our routes based on local expertise and guest feedback. We support small, independent businesses, many of which have spent generations perfecting a single dish. And unlike many food tours, all food and drinks are included and portions are far more than a meal's worth of food.
Why are food tours one of the best ways to experience a destination?
Food reveals things that the internet can’t. Every dish has a story. It reflects local ingredients and preserves traditions that have been passed down for generations. A great food tour combines cuisine, culture, history, and neighborhood exploration into a single experience, helping travelers better understand the place they’re visiting.
Where does Lost Plate operate food tours?
Lost Plate offers city food tours and multi-day trips across China, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Our destinations include Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Shanghai, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Portland, and more.
How does Lost Plate find the restaurants included on its tours?
Our team spends months (sometimes years) exploring neighborhoods, meeting restaurant owners, talking with locals, and eating our way through cities before a tour is ever launched. We don’t build tours from online rankings or review websites. Every stop is chosen through firsthand research and continually re-evaluated over time. If a restaurant loses what made it special, we keep searching until we find the perfect place for you.
Are Lost Plate tours worth it?
We think so! If you want to discover regional dishes, understand the stories behind them, visit places you wouldn’t find on your own, and eat a lot of food, Lost Plate food tours are perfect for you. Since 2013, thousands of travelers have joined us across China, Southeast Asia, and beyond, and many tell us their tour was the highlight of their trip.