This summer, everyone is talking about London's tastiest treasure hunt, Gourmaze, a genius company that has combined three of our favourite things: exploring London, puzzles and food. Following cryptic clues sent directly to your phone, you are sent on a journey of delicious discovery, through secret side streets and hidden squares, unlocking tasty treats along the way! You can either race the clock and try to complete the puzzles as quickly as possible (top of the leaderboard each month wins a prize), or enjoy the stroll and take your time. Not to worry, the clock is paused each time you stop to eat.
Gourmaze has five different mazes to choose from:
The Rickshaw Race - Seek out three international dishes in Camden (Starter, Main & Dessert)
The Taco Trade - Discover three taco portions around Shoreditch
The Sweet Escape - Enjoy three mystery desserts around Tottenham Court Road and Covent Garden.
The Talisman Treats - Three delicious Asian dishes and a side, scattered around Soho
The Time Travellers Space Bytes - A pizza, a cocktail and a dessert in Mayfair
All of the different mazes have different prices and run on different days - you can get more information here.
We booked the Talisman Treats maze, as we love Asian food. In our confirmation email, we were sent a starting location and a link to start our Whatsapp chat. This is an entirely self guided experience - you won't meet anyone from Gourmaze on the day - but we were also given a contact number in case anything went wrong. Just a heads up, so as not to give away any spoilers for those wanting to book, we won't be writing about the locations or the exact food in this blog. Standing outside the pub we'd been instructed to start at, we hit the link in our email and after entering our booking reference, received a WhatsApp from the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius...
For the next 2.5 hours, Confucius' clues guided us around Soho, through quirky little streets, gardens and squares. We spotted several interesting looking pubs that we've earmarked for future trips... The cryptic clues you are sent to unlock the next set of directions might be related to your surroundings, a maths puzzle or a riddle. They're tricky, but solvable if you put your heads together, and if you get really stuck you can ask for the answer. You'll get stung with a five second time penalty, but that's only a disaster if you're trying to beat the clock or competing against another team.
After about 20 minutes of walking we unlocked our first dish (all food is included in the price of your ticket) - we had several flavours to choose from and it came with a side dish. Very impressive portions! We were also given a fortune cookie that we would need later... mysterious... Upon entering each restaurant, "Confucius" text us a password phrase to say and we had to show our booking email, so it's worth keeping a screengrab of it on your phone in case you lose signal.
N.B The entire activity is run from your phone, so make sure it's charged. It might be worth bringing a power pack and charging lead just in case. Also, sadly, London seems to be notorious for phone snatching at the moment, so just stay alert and look out for each other as you'll be walking around with your phone out a lot - if you have a wrist strap, we'd recommend using it.
We really enjoyed following our clues - they encourage you to look up and around, spotting details on buildings that we'd never seen before (and we lived in London for YEARS!), and its was really good fun working as a team together. Confession time: there was one code solving puzzle that we simply couldn't get our heads around, so we had to take the 5 second time penalty and ask for help, but otherwise we managed to figure everything out.
Our second dish was a sharing portion between two, so we had to agree on a flavour. By now we were getting full (these are full size menu items, not samples) and we still had one more dish to go! We headed into Chinatown, red lanterns floating above us. Surely this is where we would find our last eatery? But no... out the other side, across Charing Cross Road and off into theatre land... what a terrific walk! Make sure you're wearing comfy walking shoes, all of the mazes cover at least two miles of route. That being said, we had Jamie with us in his pushchair and had no issues, the whole walk was accessible.
Our third dish was just as generous as our other two and included a side - we had to take some home with us in a takeaway box! You definitely don't need to worry about getting value for money, we were stuffed by the end. While we won't say where the final location was, let's just say that it's in a VERY famous part of London that we've walked through hundreds of times, and we had no idea that this foodie place was there. That's what's so brilliant about Gourmaze's mazes: they lead you through a city that you know so well, and you still discover new parts of it hidden in plain sight. Equally, if this is your first time in London, don't worry, you don't need to know your way around at all, just follow the clues!
We had an absolute blast following Gourmaze's Talisman Treats Maze - it would be a really fun thing to do with a group of friends, as a family fun day or as a quirky date idea!
For more quirky London things to do, you might enjoy these blogs:
You can find lots more information, and more importantly book your tickets, on Gourmaze's website. They're also on Instagram!
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Disclosure: We were given two free tickets for our Gourmaze experience in exchange for this blog and this Instagram reel, however we were not paid to post and as always, all opinions are our own.
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