Forget sightseeing. Travelers are planning entire vacations around a single ingredient
New research from GetYourGuide found that 57% of Europeans surveyed would travel for one specific ingredient. Here are 10 experiences worth the trip.
A famous landmark used to be reason enough to book a trip. For a growing number of travelers, the reason is now something they can eat.
I get it. The best meal of my life was at a restaurant in the Swedish forest, and I had gone there to ski.
GetYourGuide calls the trend “biteseeing.” In its new survey of 1,252 adults in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, 79% said they would travel specifically for regional food experiences. Cultural and historical experiences came in at 57%.
The same share, 57%, said they would travel for one particular ingredient. Bookings back that up, with food experiences on the platform up 47% year over year.
“The kitchen has become the new museum,” said Francesca De Falco, GetYourGuide’s regional manager for Italy.
GetYourGuide also shared the 10 ingredients it says travelers ranked as most worth a trip, each tied to a tour you can book. A few of them are probably in your kitchen right now.
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Capers in Salina, Italy
Salina is the greenest of Sicily’s Aeolian Islands, and capers are its best-known crop. The Salina Capers Experience is a 90-minute visit to a farm in Leni, where a guide walks you through the caper plants and explains how they are grown and picked. It ends on a terrace with a caper tasting and a glass of the farm’s own wine.
Olives in Corfu, Greece
The Dafnis family makes The Governor olive oil on Corfu, and a three-hour tour of their mill begins in the old stone mill with a look at how oil was pressed for centuries. From there, it moves to the modern mill and a tasting that teaches you how to recognize a good olive oil. The last stop is the family’s old groves, home to an olive tree said to be about 1,500 years old.
Salt in Lanzarote, Spain
The Janubio Salt Flats are the largest in the Canary Islands and have been producing sea salt for more than 127 years. A 90-minute guided walk shows how seawater becomes salt by hand, the way it was done when the flats were built. A tasting of flor de sal follows. The grid of salt ponds set against Lanzarote’s volcanic rock is worth the stop even for people who don’t cook.
Vanilla in Tenerife, Spain
Pascal Beckers runs the only vanilla cultivation in the Canary Islands from his farm in Los Silos, on Tenerife’s north coast. It began with a single cutting from La Réunion. On his 90-minute farm tour, he explains how he and his wife turned dry land into an edible forest and how vanilla adapted to it. Beckers told GetYourGuide that most visitors arrive curious about an exotic ingredient and leave more interested in the years of work behind it.
Sichuan peppercorns in Chengdu, China
Anyone who has eaten real Sichuan food remembers the tingle. It comes from Sichuan peppercorns, the numbing half of the region’s “mala” flavor. The Sichuan Cuisine Museum, about an hour outside central Chengdu, has exhibits on the peppercorn’s history plus an all-you-can-eat snack street. Add-on cooking classes cover dishes like kung pao chicken and mapo tofu.
Sardines in Setúbal, Portugal
Setúbal once had more than 400 sardine canneries. This private walking tour of the port city south of Lisbon visits one of them, now a museum, along with the tiled Livramento Market where locals buy their fish. Book a morning slot, because the market is only part of the morning tours.
Truffles in Tuscany, Italy
This full-day trip from Florence starts in the woods with a truffle hunter and his dog. Whatever they dig up goes into lunch, which is handmade pasta with fresh truffle and local wine. The afternoon brings a wine tasting at an 18th-century villa and a stop in the medieval hill town of San Gimignano.
Saffron in Abruzzo, Italy
Saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world, and a day in the fields around Navelli explains the price. The saffron harvest experience lasts seven hours and includes a meal. Each purple crocus is picked by hand, and the red threads inside are separated by hand too. The harvest only runs for a few weeks in the fall, so dates are limited.
Tomatoes in Santorini, Greece
Santorini’s small cherry tomato once powered the island’s economy. The Tomato Industrial Museum in Vlychada is a former tomato factory with machinery dating back to 1890 and recorded stories from the people who worked there. Entry comes with an audio guide, and the shop sells tomato paste made from the local crop. Vlychada is on the south coast, well away from the Oia crowds, and the museum would slot easily into three days in Santorini.
Wasabi in Azumino, Japan
The green paste that comes with most supermarket sushi is usually horseradish. Real wasabi grows in constantly flowing water, and Daio Wasabi Farm in Nagano Prefecture is the largest farm in Japan growing it. The two-hour walking tour covers the farm, which dates to 1915, and ends with a lunch of Shinshu soba served with the real thing. Wasabi ice cream and wasabi beer are sold on site for the curious.
A few of my own favorite food experiences
That meal in Sweden was at Frö, in the Dalarna region. I went for the skiing and dog sledding and ended up at a restaurant that builds its menu around the season and what can be foraged from the surrounding forest. My tasting menu included slow-cooked pork with pickled rhubarb and wild rosemary oil. Dessert was an ice cream made with koji and woodruff, served with fermented blueberries, fried lichen and mushroom-infused caramel. Even the nonalcoholic drink pairings were made from local ingredients.
On the same trip, a snowshoeing gastronomy walk with Explore Sälen had us stopping along a snowy trail to try local cheeses and sausages. Both are in my guide to the incredible food I had in Dalarna.
Closer to home, I recently did a guided honey tasting at Queen Bee Artisan Market in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Trying the honeys side by side made the differences obvious, and pairing them with cheese was new to me. Quite a bit of honey came home with me, which puts me squarely with the 84%.
Neither trip was planned around food. The meals are still what I talk about first.
I absolutely would!
No coffee beans?
This is such a fun read — I completely agree that the meals are what I remember most from trips. The Salina capers and the truffle hunting in Tuscany both sound amazing. Planning a trip around food is a great idea!
I never would’ve thought about planning a vacation around something as simple as salt or tomatoes.
Very interesting
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.