Let’s start with the basics. What’s your name, where are you from, and what tour do you lead?

My name is Nicole Woo and I’m originally from Hong Kong. I lead the San Gabriel Valley: New Chinatown Tours.

Hi, Nicole. So, what do you do when you’re not a Six Taste tour guide?

I’m a product developer at a shoe company and I’m also a blogger. I like to go out and experience new things.

Any particular restaurant you favor when going out?

I enjoy eating at a variety of restaurants, I think Alcove Cafe & Bakery in Los Feliz is cute and has delicious food! It’s a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon (when it’s not too crowded). Definitely have to pay homage to my hometown, Hong Kong Cafe! They offer authentic Hong Kong cafe style food like its name suggests and for a low price too! Another one of my favorite cafes is China Bistro!

What about outside LA? Would you ever take an epic journey to get the food you love?

I would drive hours to get the cake from Extraordinary Desserts in San Diego!

On that note, I suspect I know the answer already, but if you could be one of the five flavor profiles, sweet, sour, bitter, salty, or umami, which would you be and why?

Sweet! I’m definitely friendly and sweet to all my friends! plus I love ice cream! Along with various desserts!

Any guilty pleasures?

Hmm, I can’t say I feel that guilty, but I’d say cup cakes or bread pudding!

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve eaten?

Coming from Hong Kong, I’ve probably eaten a lot of weird things to most people, but they’re pretty normal to me. Liver of all sorts of animals, like toads, are just some of the normal food we get. But I’ve also had pig’s blood, duck tongue, and snake soup.

Why do you like being a Six Taste tour guide?

I get to eat some of my favorite foods as my job! Not only that, I think it’s a great way to enlighten others about Chinese cuisine, which is vast and diverse. I take great pride in my cuisine so I’m glad others who are not familiar with it get to experience it, not just the typical items on the menu but what I would order myself! It’s also a great way to meet people while I’m at it.

Six Taste is proud to present culinary tours in Little Tokyo!  Over the past month, I’ve been MIA, because Alex and I have been working extremely hard to redesign the site, and set up all the logistics so we can offer culinary tours in Little Tokyo.

Little Tokyo is definitely somewhere where I love to hang out in my spare time. It’s one of the few areas in Los Angeles where it’s really easy and safe to just walk around and browse. The Japanese food here isn’t particularly known to be outstanding, but I’m telling you, Little Tokyo is underrated for its food; there are some real hidden gems.

That’s why we decided that it would be the perfect place to hold food tours - everything began to come together as we began developing this idea. Currently we are offering two types of tours - a tour we affectionately call our ‘Epicurious’ Tour - which gives people a taste of what we have to offer. It’s a shorter tour with only four stops, but believe me, you’ll leave full. Our second tour we call our ‘Gastronaut’ Tour - a 3.5 hour tour with 7 stops. This one is more of a balance between history, culture and the food, where as the Epicurious tour is a little more food focused.

Anyway, we’re really excited to begin offering this tour, and we know its just a start. So far we’ve gotten rave reviews about our tours and we’re excited to see where this goes!

If you’re interested, you can sign up right here: http://www.sixtaste.com/tourlist

Thanks for reading!

EXCELLENT QUESTION.

Six Taste was born out of the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of dining institutions in Los Angeles, that there is a vibrant mix of cultural neighborhoods at our fingertips in Los Angeles, and that it’s a shame to limit ones palate to fast food and soda (although I’ll admit I indulge every once in a while).

My roommate, Alex, and I, aren’t food experts by any means.  In fact, Alex has spent most of his college days eating sandwiches, which he doesn’t even particularly like, because he couldn’t and didn’t want to use the kitchen in his fraternity house.  Myself, I’ve done a fair share of cooking and food exploration, but nothing that could consider me an expert.  To be honest, I’ve had much more failures as a cook than successes, for example, my inability to cook steak without setting off the smoke alarms.  However, we both came to the conclusion that its time to expand our horizons and take advantage of the fact that we’re living in Los Angeles and have access to all these different types of foods and cultures.

So we’ve decided: to dive into the culinary world head first.  And we’re going to chronicle it here.  Two everyday guys living in Los Angeles with a passion to explore, have adventures, be entertained and entertain, and have some great conversations over food.

The name?  Well, widely its accepted that there are 5 primary tastes - sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami (or savory).  We’re saying that maybe through our food exploration, we’ll find a sixth!  And let’s be honest…Six Taste rolls off your tongue better than Sixth.  Unless you have a lisp.

Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-hour week and leading the lifestyle design movement, is a pretty awesome guy. Alex and I both love...