By Stefan Yablonski
While traveling to other cities, Colette Astoria discovered tours which included food and history and thought — “I could do that in Oswego! We have great places to eat and a lot of history to share!” We recently chatted with her.
What types of tours do you do? Oswego Food & History, Just History and Haunted Oswego Tours. Usually the haunted tours are the most popular.
How much do the tours cost? The Haunted Tour and the Just History Tour are $25 each. The Food and History Tour is $75 — that covers all the samples.
Your food tours don’t replace regular meals, do they? The food tours are not intended to replace your breakfast or lunch. Participants should consider eating breakfast before the tour. We serve enough food that for most participants, lunch afterward is not necessary. There are two “entrees” — but you have so much food on the way, you don’t need a meal. It’s kind of like a progressive dinner you make your way through.
Which businesses are part of the food tours? We go to Nora’s first, then we come to the Coffee Connection and then we go to The Crumb and then up around West Park and we stop at Stone’s Candies and get custard. We stop at Snackz and Zenergy Café, Southern Fare, Red Sun and Chelle’s Bake Shop and then we go up to the Roof Top Lounge — that’s our last stop.
How long does a tour last? Tours are around an hour and a half. Tours with the food, depending on how many people there are, sometimes it is three hours … sometimes closer to four.
About how many people take the tours? I say the limit is 25, but I have done more. I like an audience.
Who are the ghosts highlighted in the tours? The Seneca Hill Ghost is a bit too far out (laughs) — but I do tell that story because when I first heard the story, I thought it was Seneca Street over here. People love to tell ghost stories to me. So I have quite the collection. I had to pare it down. People ask me if I have ever seen one of these ghosts. But, no, I haven’t seen any.
How long have you been doing this? I’ve been doing this for eight years now. When people from out of town would come to visit, I’d give them my 10-cent tour. When I first started for real, I was just doing the history tour. Actually, I was on the cover of Oswego County Business Magazine the year I opened.
