PORTLAND, Ore. – It's 10:45 on a Saturday morning, about the time most sane tourists are relaxing over a late breakfast.

But not the 10 of us who are following David Schargel, founder of Portland Walking Tours, on one of his Epicurean Excursions through the streets of downtown.

Just 45 minutes into the tour, we've already sipped tomato-orange soup and sampled a dairy and wheat-free energy bar made by a local chef.

Now as we wait for a streetcar to take us to the restaurant- and cafe-filled Pearl District, Mr. Schargel says it's time for a beer.

A view of downtown Portland from the West Hills. (kgw.com Photo)

Ten minutes and eight trolley stops later, we enter through the back door at BridgePort Brewing Company, Portland's oldest craft brewery, and meet cellar master Todd Fleming.

He passes out plastic cups filled with samples of India Pale Ale and explains the difference between ale yeast and lager yeast.

More midmorning culinary marathon than leisurely walk, Mr. Schargel's tour is aimed at exposing visitors to Portland's lively and eco-friendly food scene.

"A food tour was just a natural for Portland," said Mr. Schargel, 42. He started Portland Walking Tours five years ago, with a focus on historical walks, and added the culinary tours last year. "There's such an abundance of fresh, whole, organic food here."

Mr. Schargel is a former New Yorker who left a career in high-tech and moved to Portland 10 years ago. Dressed in baggy khakis, he looks like someone whose idea of a culinary treat might be pastrami on rye, but he's passionate about Portland's organic farmers, artisan food producers and save-the-environment culture.

The Epicurean Excursions are built around a theme he calls FLOSS: fresh, local, organic, seasonable and sustainable.

With the exception of one or two items – tea from China and coffee from Italy – everything sampled on the tours is made locally with local ingredients.

Our goal: sample 30 local food and drink items in 3 ½ hours.

Our first stop: a deli called the Flying Elephant, where we sipped the tomato-orange soup from plastic cups. I think most of us would have liked to have started with coffee, but Mr. Schargel said it was important to get a little food in our stomachs. The brewery was our next stop.

Founded in 1984 by a local winemaker, BridgePort brews its beer inside a restored former hemp-rope factory built in 1888.

We're invited to chew on a few grains of roasted barley and see a chilly room where the brewery stores fresh hops in burlap sacks.

It was 11:30 a.m. by the time we left and headed to our next stop. Mr. Schargel opened a cooler he'd been pulling behind him like a suitcase on wheels.

He produced plastic bottles of Oregon Rain, water harvested from the sky on aluminum sheets by a company in Newberg, Ore.

One of the most popular businesses in the area is the European-style Pearl Bakery, opened in 1997. Mr. Schargel marched us past cyclists having coffee at the sidewalk tables and led us to the back where a baker was dipping macaroons into a bowl of chocolate.

Lined up on a counter were six plates of goodies. Someone started to grab a croissant, but Mr. Schargel urged us to "build up to the flavors, like wine," starting with the lightest (a French baguette) and working up to the heaviest (a dense, dry chocolate muffin called a bouchon).

Next came samples of gourmet mustards and Oregon pinot noir at a combination kitchen shop, wine store and cooking school called In Good Taste. Then we moved on to more of what Mr. Schargel calls Portland's "liquid assets."

Besides wine, beer and coffee, the city is known for tea. Oregon Chai, Stash Tea and Tazo Tea are all homegrown, and at least a half-dozen cafes around town specialize in exotic Asian blends. One is the TeaZone, opened seven years ago in the Pearl District by husband-and-wife team Jhanne Jasmine and Grant Cull.

The weather was nice, so we gathered at one of the sidewalk tables. Mr. Schargel passed out lemon cookies (acid to clear the palate from the mustard), and poured cups of a fragrant jasmine pearl, smoky oolong and a sweet black tea flavored with lychee fruit.

I was beginning to see that there was logical order to the foods we were sampling. First came soup, then beer, then dessert. Now after mustard, wine and tea, it was time for pizza. We walked a few blocks to the Ecotrust building, a former truck depot built in 1895.

All the tenants are eco-friendly businesses. Hot Lips Pizza, for instance, uses its pizza oven to provide the building hot water. The owners get all their ingredients from local farms and press their sodas from locally grown berries.

We washed down slices of a pesto-cilantro pie with fresh strawberry soda.

It would have been nice to linger and hear more about Hot Lips, but it was nearly 1:30 p.m.

Five more tastes to go, and we still hadn't had coffee.

Our final destination was a Tuscan-inspired dessert shop called Via Delizia, Italian for "street of delights." The coffee was Illy, imported from Italy by the owners, Portlanders Karen and Chris Lawless.

We grabbed seats next to a faux olive tree and sampled three of the cafe's 24 flavors of gelato: hazelnut, tiramisu and lemon-blackberry.

Then, nearly four hours after we started, we crossed the finish line with our final taste, coin-size brandied chocolate truffles.

We hadn't eaten large amounts, yet after the parade of small bites, beer, wine, tea and coffee, no one left hungry. Except for Mr. Schargel. He hadn't eaten anything.

So where was he going for lunch?

"Honkin' Huge Burritos," he said without thinking. "You can get this huge burrito for under $5."

They're sold from a booth on Pioneer Courthouse Square near the tourist office where the walking tours start. Check it out.

Portland Walking Tours' Epicurean Excursion ($59 per person) runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 25. Reservations are recommended. Maximum, 15 people. Walking distance is about 1.5 miles.

The company offers two other regularly scheduled walking tours, Best of Portland, at 10 a.m. daily April through November and Underground Portland, at 2 p.m. daily. Both are $15. Contact: 503-774-4522; www.portland walkingtours.com.