When Colin and Jenoa Matthes left their home state of Utah to embark on a world tour in 2019, they found themselves drawn to the food scenes in places like France and Italy.
“We actually loved, especially, the food in all of those different countries … and the way local and specialized they were in numerous regions … That is not likely something that we get as much within the U.S. where we’re from, where it’s more of a smorgasbord of cuisines from all over the world,” Colin Matthes told CNBC by video call.
Last 12 months, the couple arrange a tour company called Stay Awhile, which organizes trips “designed around food,” in response to the corporate’s website.
Stay Awhile’s first destination was Bologna, Italy, where guests took part in a month-long food tasting and remote-working trip, trying the local mortadella sausage, tasting almond and pistachio granitas (a type of sorbet) and eating authentic tagliatelle al ragu, a pasta served with a conventional beef and pork sauce.
Baking in Paris
Next up for Stay Awhile is a 10-day French pastry-making trip to Paris in June 2023, where guests will learn to make desserts and baked goods starting from gateau opera, a layered sponge with coffee and chocolate filling, to the classic croissant, which involves a reasonably elaborate process.
The Place Des Vosges, a square within the Marais district of Paris. Guests collaborating in Stay Awhile’s French baking course visit the world to sample gourmet delicacies.
Andrea Pistolesi | Stone | Getty Images
While boulangeries (bakeries) and patisseries (cake shops) are seemingly on every corner in Paris, it will possibly be hard to search out authentic recipes to bake pastries at home, said Matthes, who can be an amateur baker. “I feel like so a lot of them have been adjusted and perhaps simplified and … I do not feel like I’m getting like a real French eclair recipe, for instance,” he told CNBC.
To be sure that guests cook authentically, Stay Awhile hired pastry chef Jennifer Pogmore, who trained at the celebrated Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. Pogmore will instruct participants from an apartment with a big kitchen in the town’s eleventh arrondissement, a district known for its restaurants, bars and opera house.
Together with learning to make French classics, the itinerary features a day’s wine-tasting within the Champagne region in addition to a guided tour of Parisian district Le Marais to try delicacies akin to cheese, cured meat and chocolates.
Fresh loaves of bread at certainly one of Poilane’s bakeries in Paris. The corporate said bakers undergo nine months of coaching to learn the trade.
Owen Franken | Corbis Documentary | Getty Images
There’s also loads of time for people to explore the town. Matthes beneficial visiting Brasserie Bellanger for traditional French essential dishes and family-run bakery Poilane for “arguably the most effective croissant in all of Paris.”
Stay Awhile’s Parisian baking tour starts at $5,400 per person, excluding flights. The couple has plans for an Italian cooking course at a villa in Tuscany, and a gourmet gastronomy experience in Spain’s Basque Country, famous for its bite-sized dishes often called pintxos.
“The essential objective is for people to … have these in-depth experiences with food and cuisine, and specifically local and regional cuisine,” Matthes told CNBC.
A food tour of San Sebastian
Pintxos are a staple in San Sebastian, one of the vital popular places for foodies in Spain’s Basque Country. Town is a highlight of northern Spain for luxury tour operator SmoothRed. It organizes bespoke wine and food trips to the world, with sales director Adam Stebbings recommending flying to Bilbao, after which experiencing the cuisine of San Sebastian and the vineyards of Rioja.
“The … Bilbao-San Sebastian-triangle with Rioja is extremely popular. It isn’t just doing a wine tour … it is a gourmet getaway,” Stebbings told CNBC by phone.
San Sebastian, in northern Spain, is understood for its gourmet food scene.
Krzysztof Baranowski | Moment | Getty Images
A four-day trip might include two nights at Hotel Marques de Riscal, a luxury spa hotel in Rioja, with an eight-course meal at its Michelin-starred restaurant, followed by an evening on the five-star Hotel Maria Cristina in San Sebastian and dinner at steakhouse Casa Julian de Tolosa. Prices start at £2,289 ($2,650) per person, including transfers but not flights.
For pintxos, Stebbings beneficial Borda Berri and MendaurBerria, each small bars in San Sebastian’s old town. For lunch, he suggested fish restaurant Elkano, a few half-hour drive west of San Sebastian. Reservations are essential because it was named certainly one of the world’s 50 best restaurants in 2021, Stebbings said.
Interest in food-focused trips is rising, said Stebbings. Sales are up 60% 12 months over 12 months from 2019, though a few of this increase is as a consequence of bookings delayed from 2020, he said. The French regions of Burgundy and Champagne are especially popular, he said.
Pintxos, a conventional small-plate dish, in San Sebastian, Spain.
Malcolm P Chapman | Moment | Getty Images
Guests are staying longer and adding more excursions, Stebbings said. On a tour of the French Languedoc-Roussillon region, travelers can take a ship trip to an oyster farm off the coast of Montpellier. In the event that they’re in Tuscany, they may add an e-bike tour of a vineyard or two.
Wine-tasting in Tuscany
Tuscany is well-known for cities akin to Florence and Siena, that are each near Borgo San Vincenzo, a latest luxury boutique hotel named after the patron saint of winemaking.
The hotel encourages travelers to get off the beaten track and experience the region in a more authentic way, through olive oil tastings from small producers to a cheesemaking demonstration at a close-by farm.
Boutique hotel Borgo San Vincenzo, in Tuscany, is known as after the patron saint of winemaking, Saint Vincent.
Borgo San Vincenzo
Truffle-hunting near the historic town of Montalcino and a cooking class at a Thirteenth-century castle with local chefs are popular, in response to a hotel representative, while an e-bike tour to taste Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, a neighborhood wine, was also successful with guests this 12 months.
This fall, Borgo San Vincenzo will launch winemaker dinners, with quite a lot of producers providing private tastings. One among the dinners will feature dishes created by the hotel’s head chef Giulio Lombardelli, which will probably be matched with wine produced by his brother, Amadeo Lombardelli, from nearby vineyard Icario.
The Flying Monk Bar on the Borgo San Vincenzo hotel in Tuscany serves classic Italian cocktails, akin to Aperol or prosecco spritz.
Borgo San Vincenzo
Pairings might include a pumpkin, leek and almond lasagna with Icario Trebbiano 2021, a white wine, or spicy shrimp with pioppini mushrooms paired with Icario Nysa Rose 2021.
Cooking within the Cotswolds
Local ingredients are at the center of the cooking school at Daylesford, an organic farm and upscale estate within the Cotswolds, a picturesque region famous for its rolling countryside and villages with honey-colored stone buildings.
Half- and full-day classes at the varsity — which range from artisan breadmaking to a butchery workshop — provide a way for guests to learn in regards to the region via its produce.
A chef prepares the table on the Daylesford cooking school within the U.K.’s Cotswolds region.
Daylesford
Participants also can sleep on the farm in certainly one of its cottages, converted from the unique Nineteenth-century farmhouse, or they will stay in nearby Kingham, a village where Daylesford owns cottages in addition to The Wild Rabbit, a pub with accommodations.
Daylesford also has a farm shop, garden and antiques center, wine store and restaurants, plus a spa and a spread of organic skincare products.
But despite its expansion over the past 20 years, Daylesford stays an organic farm “at its heart,” in response to chef James Devonshire, who oversees its cooking school.
It “either rears or grows an enormous amount of various ingredients,” he told CNBC by phone. Travelers might discover a double Gloucester cheese produced at its creamery or a carton of heritage tomatoes grown within the garden.
“We use as much as physically possible from the garden throughout the entire 12 months,” Devonshire said, adding that the garden is otherwise not open to the general public.
A room at Fowler’s House, a rental cottage within the village of Kingham, a part of the Daylesford estate within the U.K.’s Cotswolds region.
Daylesford
People pick produce for his or her class from the garden, with recipes recently including a fillet of beef with potatoes, capers and rocket and an onion bhaji with charred cauliflower.
Classes are held in a high-ceilinged stone barn, and a number of the hottest classes include canape-making, a seasonal ceremonial dinner course and a summer barbecue and firepit class.
While Daylesford’s shops and restaurants can get busy, the cookery school is quieter, said Devonshire.
“It’s like a bit oasis,” he said.