Catch Food Flights with Club Adventures
The new local food tours are being helmed by some of Providence's culinary elites.
Photography courtesy of Club Adventures by AAA Exclusive Vacations.
Photography courtesy of Club Adventures by AAA Exclusive Vacations.
The hosts of Club Adventures’ new food tours read like a list of Providence culinary all-stars: Oberlin’s Ben Sukle. Robert Andreozzi of Pizza Marvin. Gift Horse’s Chris Pfail. The tours, twelve in all, take travelers all over the globe and were the brainchild of Rhode Islander Bethany Hodge, a fervent fan of the capital city’s restaurant scene and head of product at Club Adventures. “Food and hospitality are really linked industries in terms of values and encouraging people to step outside their comfort zones, whether it’s trying a new dish or visiting a new country,” she says. The small-group adventures kicked off this summer, with Sukle exploring the cuisine of northern Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. Travelers indulged in baked goods at Sukle’s friend’s bakery in Trieste, Italy, sampled cheese at a goat farm, and hunted for truffles in the countryside. In mid-October, guests will enjoy pintxo crawls and wine tastings in Spain’s Basque region with the husband-and-wife team of Luke Mersfelder, who works at Dune Brothers, and Britt Simons, bar manager of the Eddy in Providence. The seed for the trips was planted in 2019, when Hodge ran into Bethany Caliaro, Oberlin’s co-owner and sommelier, at a farmers market and asked for restaurant recommendations for an upcoming trip to Mexico City. “Every single place she recommended was incredible,” Hodge says. “That’s when I realized that the insight of a food professional could really take a standard trip and elevate it into something really special.” Caliaro will take guests on a ten-day journey to Sicily next April, and plans are in the works to add new trips to Portugal and Scotland to Club Adventures’ 2025 lineup. To that we say bon appetit! clubadventures.com/food-tours
