About Carl Raymond

Carl Raymond is a passionate tour guide committed to sharing his love of New York City with a love of the arts, food and all aspects of culture.   He maintains his love of his native New England along with visits whenever possible to favorite places abroad including the heart of London, the south of France, the secluded neighborhoods of Rome and the sun soaked islands of Greece.   Carl’s eclectic experience gives his guests a unique inside view into New York’s worlds of fine art, publishing and media, classical music and food. 

Following university studies in France in art history, literature and vocal music, Carl began his career as an opera singer performing in the ensembles of the Opera Company of Boston and Boston Concert Opera. After moving to New York, he retired his vocal cords yet appeared regularly as a non-singing actor for five seasons with the Metropolitan Opera. 

A career in the world of book publishing followed working as a marketing director with houses such as Random House, Simon and Schuster and Penguin both in New York and in London.  He continues his love of reading classic literature, British murder mysteries, long biographies and sharing the literary haunts of New York City with visitors. 

After years at the center of the publishing world, he turned to a lifelong passion for good food and began his professional culinary training with studies at New York’s French Culinary Institute and received a diploma in Culinary Arts in 2008 from the Institute of Culinary Education.  Carl developed and taught sold-out classes and created unique food experiences (“The Food of Mad Men”, “The Food of Downton Abbey”) for over eight years at Manhattan’s Astor Center. In addition, he worked as a recipe developer with Rodale’s Prevention magazine and the Food Network and a regular on-camera spokesperson for Roland imported foods.  

The world of tour guiding has allowed Carl to bring all his passions and experiences together.  He became a licensed New York City tour guide in 2014.  He has created and given tours of classic New York neighborhoods from ghost tours of Greenwich Village to the glamour of 19th century Noho to insider tours of the Broadway theatre district.    He is a regular speaker and lecturer on all aspects of food history and has given public talks at New York’s National Arts Club, Merchant’s House Museum, Metropolitan Opera and for the English-Speaking Union, St. George’s Society, the Royal Oak Foundation and Historic Royal Palaces.  

He was a co-writer on SAVORING GOTHAM: A FOOD LOVER’S COMPANION TO NEW YORK CITY (Andrew Smith, ed.), Oxford University Press.  Carl is currently working on his own book, a culinary history of the Gilded Age.