Just a quick bite to eat in Tuscany

We travel to see new places, experience new cultures, meet interesting people and, of course…eat. Since food is what we do best here, we started Zingerman’s Food Tours back in 1997 to share the places we love—near and far—and culinary adventures that even well practiced tourists have never even heard of.

Since then, we’ve really gone places! We’ve fished on the Mediterranean, met Cava makers in Spain, hand rolled couscous in Morocco, and made goulash in Hungary, just to name a few things. Close to home, we’ve devoured the food traditions of Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula and Detroit.

There’s always a long afterglow after we return from these trips. We’ll admit that it’s always a bit hard to get back to reality. With dreamy memories of recent tours to Croatia and Tuscany still fresh in our minds, here’s some of what you can expect when you travel with us.

An open-air market in Croatia

You’ll taste the intricacies of the food regions you visit
Food traditions transcend borders. On our tour to Croatia, we explored culinary intersections, spanning from Austro-Hungarian dishes to those with Italian influences on the coast. “You also have a mix of the two and all this mixing of ingredients, and then you have all this fresh seafood from the Adriatic,” says Amy Emberling, who led the tour. “One of the locals said, ‘This place is full of border stories because the place is very much about borders shifting.'” Our trips are designed to highlight the major differences and the subtle intricacies of food regions.

Truffle hunting in Croatia

You’ll see how some of your favorite foods are sourced and made
In Tuscany, we witnessed our favorite Parmagiano-Reggiano cheese being made. The couple who produce the cheese wake up at 3:00 am to produce 10 wheels of parm every day. Our group didn’t get there quite that early, but we did get to witness a large part of the process. A tasting with cheese and yogurt followed. Love truffles? In Croatia, the group visited Buzet, the country’s truffle capital and even participated in a hunt with an expert and her truffle-sniffing dogs. That was followed by a truffle breakfast that even included truffle and olive oil ice cream.

The finished product

You’ll cook with some amazing chefs and learn from world-class artisans and experts
Cooking is a big part of Zingerman’s Food Tours. We take private lessons at cooking schools, and we visit private kitchens to learn how to prepare local delicacies from baked goods to pasta making and more. We also visit wineries, distilleries, and little butcher shops, like that of the famous Dario Cecchini in Tuscany’s Arno Valley. We’ve enjoyed private wine tastings in Chianti and toured coffeehouses in Trieste, too. With these experts and artisans come fascinating histories and personal stories that you won’t find in a travel magazine or tour book.

Cheese and charcuterie tasting in Marcana, Croatia

You’ll visit “the middle of nowhere”
“The goal of tours is to find places and take people to places that they wouldn’t normally go if you were a tourist—especially if it’s your first time,” says Amy. This means traveling far and wide to the smallest farms or the most remote villages. Building these relationships is something that Food Tours works on for years and years. And sometimes it takes many conversations and some serious convincing because many of the farmers and producers are not used to hosting groups. The Croatia trip included a day at a family-owned goat farm in Krnica that only a handful of visitors have every had the chance to see.

A Tuscan winery

You’ll make strong connections and, maybe, life-long friends
Because we travel in small groups (never more than 15 people when we go international) and because our tours are focused on breaking bread, we connect quickly. “When you spend several hours a day around a table, or in a kitchen, with a group of people, it becomes very intimate and you create bonds pretty quickly,” says Kristie Bralbec, a leader on the Tuscany tour who added that members of the group have been in communication, sharing memories and photos of the Italian food they’ve been making a home in the weeks since returning from Tuscany. Kristie says that she feels like she’s made friends for life.

Intrigued? Visit our Zingerman’s Food Tours website to see our next few trips. Next year’s trip to Morocco has already sold out (it’s a good one!), but we have spots for Hungary, Spain, and Tuscany. Bon voyage!