Cook’s Tour : Excursions: Foodies pile into Dolores Felts’ minivan for an exotic safari of specialty sources, from live catfish to <i> mole</i> .

“The world has gone food crazy!” bubbles Doris Felts as her minivan sets out for a tour of Los Angeles.

As proof, Felts departs from the usual rich-and-famous L.A. tour bus chatter and entertains guests with stories of Belgian food auctions, British cooking schools and Cajun and Creole cuisine during her tour of the city’s marketplaces.

Five years ago, Felts decided to combine her experience as a tour guide with her love of cooking. The result is a menu of Culinary Adventures, featuring seafood and produce wholesalers, ethnic and specialty markets, wineries, growers and restaurants. Whether it’s local day trips or extended tours to food Meccas like Baja and Santa Fe, Felts includes sources that reflect her motto, “You’re only as good as the foods you work with.”

On this morning, the temperature at Pacific American Fish Co. on East 6th Street is a nippy 40 degrees. Workers in floor-length yellow plastic aprons and knee-high rubber boots hose down the concrete floor and unload arrivals.

“The frozen fish is flown in from Mexico, Taiwan, the Philippines, Pakistan and Ecuador,” boasts sales representative Alfred Angeles, “and our fresh fish comes from Louisiana, Alaska and Florida.”

Felts takes to the frozen food aisles, making frequent stops at her favorite finds. “This squid is poor man’s abalone,” she states. “If you were Italian, you’d call them ‘calamari.’ ” On mackerel filet: “They’re great with lemon and dill.” On croaker: “You don’t find this very often.” How would you cook periwinkle? “Steam them,” she replies. Mussels? “Marinate them.”

More than 130 varieties of fish and seafood at wholesale prices attract schools of loyal customers, such as Herminia Cruz from the Philippines, who returns weekly for shrimp, oysters and clams. Like other shoppers, she fills a plastic bag with crushed ice and weighs her own selections. With such prices as $2.49 a pound for Dover sole and $3.09 for cuttlefish, no one seems to mind waiting in the long checkout line.

The next stop is Yaohan, an upscale Japanese grocery on Alameda Street. Wheeling a shopping cart, Felts begins by identifying produce items like the fuyu persimmon and the “outstandingly fresh” selections of shiitake, oyster and honey mushrooms.

A colorful array of relishes and pickles begs a demonstration in tasting etiquette: “You will spear your choice and take it off the fork and nibble.” At the takeout section, Felts admires the “exquisitely packaged delicacies” such as beef and curry croquettes and “really-to-die-for” meatballs.

On this Saturday morning, representatives from Happy World restaurant are serving up deep-fried calamari, oysters and scallops for the appreciative group of six.

“We buy very good quality from Korea, Mexico and Argentina and make it here by hand,” says company representative Mie Hayashi. Farther down the aisle, shoppers sample microwaveable pork and beef dumplings.

Felts herds her group toward Ginza ya, a Franco-Japanese bakery in the same building. “You just absolutely have to taste this round French bread with sweet potatoes oozing out the top!” The bread is so popular, says employee Linda Kong, that people order it by phone. Sure enough, within five minutes, the trayful of round loaves has vanished.

Grocery bags and stomachs full, the tour group returns to the minivan for the next adventure. “This is so fun!” says Maribeth Leadley of Santa Ana. “Shop till you drop!”

When Felts announces that the next stop is Avery, a supermarket for professional chefs, the conversation turns to Wolf ranges and glass-fronted refrigerators.

These tourists take their cooking seriously. Take Leadley, whose three cats are named Gumbo, Won Ton and Brie. Or friends Beverly Goldsby and Monica Zagha from the Westside, who love to cook and “talk about food all the time.” Bud Smoot is the cook in their family, according to his wife, Ruthie. “Though when I bake, my family won’t eat it and neither will the birds,” admits Bud, who lives in Santa Monica.

The passionate cooks enter Avery’s showroom like children in F.A.O. Schwartz before Christmas. Picture an area filled with 7,000 different cooking items. Says sales manager C. Rose, “There’s probably everything that you need here--and even more things you don’t”--like a 1950s ice-cream soda fountain, an 80-quart Hobart mixer and an espresso machine on sale for $3,995, regularly $4,600. When you’re in the market for a paella pan, shrimp de-veiner or wire whisks guaranteed for life, this is the place.

Rose interrupts the tour to help Stephanie Chiacos and Mark Carter, chef-owner of Duplex, locate brandy snifters. Carter describes his Los Feliz restaurant as an “urban roadhouse where I like to cook the way I cook for my friends at home.” He and Chiacos shop Avery for specialized and imported items and to see what’s new.

Part of what’s new is a tabletop showroom, featuring about 75 patterns of restaurant-quality china as well as flatware and glassware. Wolfgang Puck did his tabletop shopping here recently for Granita, his new Malibu restaurant. The dishes are made for commercial dishwashers. They are fired at a higher temperature and feature rolled and reinforced edges and glazed bottoms. Just one caveat: The restaurant-quality place settings are sold in sets of a dozen.

Next up, dim sum in Chinatown. The sea of people seated in the enormous dining room of the Empress Pavilion is like a scene from Hong Kong. Waitresses in green satin navigate a convoy of silver carts full of steaming rice noodles, turnip cakes and fried dumplings. Manager Jimmy Chiu unfolds a lotus leaf to reveal sticky rice with the “special ingredient.” Though the menu varies seasonally, the perennial favorites, according to Chiu, are shrimp har gow and pork shiu mai.

“Do you know how to get more tea at a Chinese restaurant?” Felts inquires. “You don’t ask for it. You just tilt the lid on the teapot and they’ll bring you more.” No such signal is required for more food. The waitresses make frequent stops.

Downstairs at the 99 Ranch Market, shoppers are greeted with a large sign: “LIVE CRABS DO BITE--Touch at Your Own Risk.” Talk about fresh fish! Besides the moving crabs, there are tanks of catfish, lobster and tilapia as well as clams, oysters and mussels.

Felts passes approval, but issues a warning. “Just because fish are alive doesn’t mean they’re OK. You must make sure the water is clean and the tank free of algae.”

She proceeds down the aisles of Chinese and other Asian specialties, pointing out the variety of noodles, soy sauces, rice vinegars and rice wines.

Back aboard the minivan, Beverly Goldsby asks her friend, “What did I buy? It’s a good thing we came in two cars!” And Leadley settles into her seat. “I think it’s nap time.”

Not so fast. Felts has other plans for the afternoon. Down the street at Sun Long, the group is expected for a tea ceremony.

There, enthroned in massive wooden chairs with red silk cushions, the group watches as hostess Luman Lu prepares a pot of ginseng. “Sometimes you go to work and feel tired. Ginseng will make you feel more energetic,” she promises. Despite the pitch, Lu gets less than an enthusiastic reaction. She quickly steeps a pot of the more popular spring tea, also “good for the cholesterol.”

The tour’s finale is Tiangius, a Latino market in Montebello operated by Von’s. Out front, mariachis serenade shoppers. Inside the 60,000-square-foot market, pinatas hang from the ceiling and sausages from the walls. One finds everything from handmade tortillas to jalapenos and sugar cane.

Here again, Felts is in her element as an interpreter of exotic foodstuffs. “What you want to look for in ginger is a very light color and sheen. The shinier the better,” she explains, holding up good and bad examples. On preparing chayote squash: “Cook it exactly like a baked potato in the microwave.” What’s menudo? “Tripe soup traditionally served to get rid of a hangover.” Mole? “A chili sauce with up to 100 ingredients.”

For a future Southern California Culinary Guild function (Felts is president), she selects banana leaves and corn husks. “I’m going to play with traditional and nontraditional dessert tamales using bananas, raisins and masa . Whenever I get a banana past its prime, I mash it up, freeze it and use it later to bake.”

On the ride back, Monica Zagha passes around a box of fortune cookies, instructing everyone to share their fortunes out loud.

“Redecorating will be in your plans,” reads Felts. “If I show this to my husband, he’ll faint!”

Zagha’s fortune is next. “You will stop on the soil of many countries.”

“We’ve done that today,” adds Leadley.

FOOD FLIGHTS

One-day tours will be held Dec. 28: “The Ethnic Marketplaces of Los Angeles” and Jan. 4: “Early Bird Tour--The Marketplaces of Los Angeles.” Cost: $65, includes lunch and transportation. Length: About eight hours. “A Culinary Adventure in Mexico” will be held Jan. 11-13. Cost for the weekend in Baja California is $275 a person. For registration and information, call (310) 456-2484 or write: Culinary Adventures, 23908 De Ville Way, Malibu, Calif. 90265.