Discover the flavours and cultures of places from Copenhagen and Palermo to Croatia and Kunisak.
Food tours and culinary holidays are a gateway to acquiring a deeper understanding of different cultures while expanding your culinary repertoire. They are a fantastic way to feast on delicious food, sip fine wine and other libations, and see the sights at the same time.
Cooking with the Duchess
Besides lounging on its beautiful beaches and visiting its well-preserved monuments, Palermo is also where you’ll want to sample delicious local cuisine. Get a crash course in preparing authentic Sicilian specialties by joining the Cooking with the Duchess tour. Conducted by Duchess of Palma Nicoletta Lanza Tomasi, the tour is part food tour, part masterclass.
It starts with a visit to the street market, Mercato del Capo, to shop for the freshest produce for the traditional Sicilian menu you will create under the duchess’ expert guidance. The cooking is carried out in the kitchen of the duchess’ seafront home, the 18th-century Palazzo Lanza Tomasi. After lunch — served by white-gloved waiters — you will be given a personal tour of the magnificently restored palace
Culinary Bike Tour
Copenhagen is best explored on two wheels. If are a confident cyclist — and a foodie, to boot! — consider joining Foods of Copenhagen’s Culinary Bike Tour the next time you visit the capital of Denmark.
The four-and-a-half hour tour explores Copenhagen’s contemporary food scene. It takes guests to the hippest places in town, and includes a mix of street food and fine dining. While no two tours are the same, a typical one may include open-faced sandwiches at Selma, desserts at Winterspring, hotdogs from Kejser Sausage, and fermented potato fries at Tapperiet Brus. It also includes local beverages, such as Nordic ciders.
Flavours of Croatia
While Croatia is famous for its breathtaking scenery, what is not as well appreciated is its cuisine, which is equally enticing. Besides traipsing through quaint hilltop towns and exploring impressive caves, groups on international luxury travel agency Scott Dunn’s Best of Croatia and Slovenia tour also get to feast on the varied dishes of the local cuisine.
This includes foraging for truffles in the Istrian village of Livade with a local guide, and sampling fresh Croatian oysters in the town of Ston. Oenophiles have not been left out: a private tour of a family-owned winery is included on the itinerary, topped with samplings of delicious vintages.
Soba So Good 
Walk Japan’s Kunisaki Retreat is a seven-day, six-night tour centred on the Kunisaki Peninsula. It focuses on meditation, gentle exercise, relaxation, and learning about the traditions of this beautiful area of Japan. Aside from wandering through ethereal scenery and luxuriating in an onsen [Japanese for ‘inn with a hot spring’], participants will get to enjoy Japanese farmhouse cuisine at its best.
With an emphasis on local produce and cuisine, each meal is designed to tantalise the senses. As one of the accommodations on the tour is an inn that specialises in the making of soba noodles, a lesson on the finer points of whipping up a mouthwatering bowl of soba from scratch is on the cards. Soba buckwheat noodles have a long history in Japan, and are part of washoku — traditional Japanese cuisine. Participants will be taught to knead and roll out soba dough before cutting it into noodles, all under the expert guidance of the host.
