There are few more delicious ways to explore a city’s roots than by tasting your way through its enclaves, whether it’s North Beach in San Francisco or Little Italy, the trendy, restaurant-rich neighborhood in sunny San Diego. Last year, Forbes magazine dubbed Little Italy one of the country’s top 10 hottest neighborhoods for millennials. It’s awfully appealing to non-millennials, too. The food scene alone is enough to make a foodie hop the next flight. But you’ll be hard-pressed to do this area in just one jaunt. A weekend doesn’t have enough mealtimes, for one thing — not when these 48 square blocks boast more than 70 restaurants, bars, breweries and cafes.

There’s Bolt Brewery and Ballast Point Brewing. Three “Top Chef”- helmed eateries — Pacific Standard, Herb and Wood and Juniper & Ivy. Old school pizzerias, new wave pasta houses, wine bars, seafood houses and divine delis. Did we mention the devilish doughnuts? Little Italy has always been a bustling neighborhood. At one point, more than 6,000 Italian families lived and worked here, many in the fisheries that made San Diego king of the tuna world. But by the 1960s, some of that vibrancy had dimmed, first by the decline of the West Coast tuna trade, then by the rise of Highway 5. Freeway construction wiped out a third of the neighborhood.