On a balmy, overcast Tuesday in July, Scott Goodfriend prepares to take a group of five on his Iconic Foods of the Lower East Side tour in New York. They stand at the entrance of a large food market in the downtown Manhattan neighborhood.
Goodfriend grew up in the Calabasas neighborhood of Los Angeles, the oldest of two kids. His dad was a mortgage broker and his mom worked at the UCLA medical center. Food was a constant. "My parents would always love to take us out to different ethnic foods in L.A.," he says. "My dad really likes Persian food. My mom always really likes sushi and Japanese food."
When Goodfriend first moved to New York, "I would pick different neighborhoods to kind of explore," he says, including various eateries in the area. Seeking out Bosnian food took him to Astoria, Queens, for example. Curiosity about its Russian population took him to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. By 2021, he'd added his Iconic Food tour and given his business its name: Ultimate Food Tours. "I was like, how do I have something that sounds big and fun?" he says. In December 2021, he built his website, and began adding more and more tours to his repertoire there.
Going forward, Goodfriend is working to make the company global, helping guides build similar tours in San Diego and Japan. When those go live, UFT will "take a small percentage," he says.