When it comes to food and the holidays, most people eagerly anticipate the chance to have some home-cooked meals. Maybe it’s all tied to your grandmother’s famous lamb roast, which she only makes once a year. Or maybe, it’s simply the opportunity to have someone else cook for you.

Regardless, not many people associate the holidays with dining out. But every year, when I go home to Berkeley, California, I’m laser-focused on going on my own self-guided food tour.

Let me explain. It’s not that my family members are bad cooks or that I don’t appreciate it when they nicely make me a meal. But ever since I moved to the East Coast, there are just certain foods that I can’t help but crave. In college, it was worse. But even in New York, I can’t seem to find a really good burrito.

By now, “the Berkeley Food Tour,” as I like to call it, has snowballed into a tradition of its own. Relatives know it’s a top priority. Friends on the East Coast ask once I’m back how many of my favorites I got in. And as for my fellow Californians who I went to high school with? Let’s just say that many of them are co-creators of the tour and that more often than not they’re along for the ride.

But beyond finally getting some authentic Mexican food, this so-called tour is really about visiting the city that I call home. It doesn’t feel nostalgic when I stop in at one of my former haunts. Instead, going to these coffee shops and restaurants establishes that at least in some sense, these places still belong to me. This year, my boyfriend is visiting Berkeley for the first time. He’s been warned (for a while) that the Food Tour is the main item on our itinerary. But whether or not I’ll gain a new convert, at least we’ll end up more than well-fed.

Below, the official Berkeley Food Tour—in case you are ever in town.

A Mint Mojito from Philz’s Shattuck Avenue location. Photo: Courtesy of Madeleine Luckel

Coffee:

Philz Coffee

Philz coffee shops may be cropping up all over the Bay Area, but the Shattuck Avenue location will nicely position you for the rest of any food-focused day. This laid-back business specializes in brewing individual cups of coffee that are tailor-made to fit each customer’s needs. It may not be the place to go if you’re craving a latte, but their iced coffee “mint mojito” can’t be beat.