No One Dines Alone: Culinary Travel with Global Palate Adventures

Hello to all my listeners

and watchers out there.

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Thank you for being here.

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I have a little bit of a disclaimer

about this upcoming episode.

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The content is fantastic.

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However, my sound a little messed up.

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That's my fault.

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I apologize.

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I didn't know it until

long after it was recorded.

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There's actually two episodes like this.

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If you just stick with it so you can get

the good content out of it, all the rest

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of the episodes will be better, I promise.

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Thank you for being here.

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Thank you for listening.

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Thank you for watching.

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Are you an obsessed

foodie when you travel?

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Do you like to look at the markets or

see what people are eating and learn

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about the culture just through their

food and their wine and their markets?

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If so, you are going to love this episode.

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I have

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with me today guest, Susan Reinke,

and she is the founder and director

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of Global Palate Adventures.

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So this is all driven by her passion

to connect those who grow our food with

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those who celebrate it in the kitchen.

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This is traveling, this is food,

this is eating, this is drinking.

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This is taking cooking

classes in kitchens.

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From Spain to Thailand.

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So wherever she goes, you will have a

real experiential time with her in the

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kitchen or at the markets, wherever it is.

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Welcome to the show, Susan.

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Thank you so much.

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Thanks, Karen.

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I'm excited to be here.

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Great.

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So why don't you start off, just

tell us about a time that you or your

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guests had a really fantastic time in

a kitchen while you were traveling.

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Okay.

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I would love to.

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So I love to see the connections

that my guests come away with.

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They connect both with each other.

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'cause we have pretty small groups

that travel and then the connections

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they take away from the people

they meet where we're traveling.

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It may be chefs or cooks in

a kitchen, or it might be a

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wine maker or a sheep farmer.

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But some of the kitchen adventures.

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Have ranged from a home, an apartment

up five flights of stairs in Parma,

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Italy, with the woman and her daughter

that lived there, to a professional

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kitchen in San Sebastian where the

chefs had their whites on and they were.

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Tough with us, but we had chefs in

our group with us and they loved it.

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So we have different kinds of

cooking experiences and we usually

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do about one cooking class, a trip.

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And I find that that's enough for people

because it's fun, but it's also work.

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In Bordeaux, we went with, chef Fran,

and he didn't speak any English, only

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French, but we could understand what he's

saying to the vendors and showing us.

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The food.

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And then we went back to his kitchen

and, watched him cook helped him cook.

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So some of it's very hands-on

and some of it's not.

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I'd say one of the most memorable was

when we were in Barcelona and they had

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a strike going on in the whole city.

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So our class had to pivot.

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I had to pivot everything on that trip,

but our class had to go to a different

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location, and we followed the chef.

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All over town and we walked, we probably

walked like two miles to get to his

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kitchen, but by the time we did, we

were there for hours and everyone had

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the most amazing bonding experiences

cutting the heads off the fish, and

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then of course enjoy our food together.

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This particular time where you followed

the chef all over town, was he cooking

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for a restaurant or for, for you?

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He cooked for us and he took

us to a private cooking school.

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Oh.

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And there was nobody else in

the room but us, but it was a

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Professionally set up not a home.

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Yeah.

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And do you cross a lot of

territory typically on these.

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Tours so it varies.

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Sometimes we stay in one city, in

one hotel and we take day trips.

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I try, I don't wanna be one of those

groups where every day's a different city.

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Packing and unpacking, that takes time.

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So generally the tours are about a week.

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South Africa's gonna be 10 days of course.

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But typically there are seven

or eight nights and either

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one hotel, maximum three.

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But if we need to go see things, we do.

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And a lot of times they're day trips

to see vineyards or sheep farms or

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windmills where they're producing bread.

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what kind of people do you

find taking these tours?

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my connection through agriculture

and food, it actually goes

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way back in my career.

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So when I started this business 10 years

ago, my clients, were and still are

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my business associate in that world.

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So very lucky.

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So summer chefs.

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And some are pr, food, PR people, writers,

marketing people in the food world, and

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now they bring their friends and their

family and now it's sort of word of mouth.

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So that's kind of how it started.

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So So you said you're going

to South Africa, for example.

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Have you been to South Africa I

have not been to South Africa.

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I've been to Kenya.

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And saw how much I loved.

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Africa and I wanted to

experience more of it.

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That was not a food tour, so when I

thought I wanna take my guests and my

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clients somewhere in Africa, I chose South

Africa because of the wine industry there.

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I know that that's, and so

we'll be multiple places.

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There we're gonna be Cape Town and

then the wine area and then Safari.

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Nice.

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Yeah.

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What a great trip.

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I was looking at that earlier

and I saw that you are gonna

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see the penguins, which is Yes.

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On my list.

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Do you have a favorite place or, have

your people said, we really wanna go here,

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that you end up going over and over again?

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Yes and yes.

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We haven't done a lot of

repeat trips because typically

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I lead them myself for now.

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But, so I picked places I either

haven't been, or I've just been

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briefly and I wanna do our tour there.

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But we did repeat Sicily this year

and we did it a few years ago because

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I had such a big request for that.

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So Sicily repeated and, we saw a

little bit more of the country.

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There's east and west and

there's so much to see.

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We are repeating Portugal.

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We were there, we did a group trip there

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I know in the food world have been to

Portugal, but I'm gonna put it out there.

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I have two sold out back to back trips.

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I think people still wanna go to Portugal,

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I don't even know what kind

of food they're known for.

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Would it be similar to Spain?

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Some similarities, and then

they have their own specialties,

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so certainly seafood because

everything's, based on that.

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And a lot of, shellfish, tinned

fish, anchovies, mussels, sardines.

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They're one of my favorite things

I've ever, let's see if I can say it.

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Is PA Patis.

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Ada, I'm messing up the pronunciation,

but they're, custard pastries.

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And what's fun about foods sometimes is

that they have a history behind them.

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So the monks, many hundreds

of years ago, used the egg

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whites to starch their clothes.

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So they had all these leftover egg

yolks and they came up with this custard

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dessert, and they keep the recipe.

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Still very secret.

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But boy, to get them fresh there,

is one of my favorite things.

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you're tying the culture and

the food together and the

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history and the food together.

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That's one of the reasons people

wanna travel, not just to eat and

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drink but to learn and understand

the culture, and then bring back

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the memories of the people they met.

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And have you gone anywhere new and,

had something on your plate that

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shocked you or surprised you I'd

say the trip that I went on that,

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well, I can think of a couple of them

where I tried things that shocked me.

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Whether it's the crickets in Oaxaca,

Uhhuh, which the grass uppers.

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I gave those a try and they were

just sort of savory, crunchy.

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They were fine.

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And then in Thailand, the

durian fruit, that is the smell.

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It knocks you, it blows you away.

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It's so bad.

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That fruit, why do you suppose

they ate that in the first place?

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If it's.

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So putrid, right?

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I've heard it's like really

bad old socks or something.

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It's terrible.

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It's terrible.

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And that's a good question.

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I don't think we asked the tour

guide that and we should have.

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Well, you see, I think

about foods like that.

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Like who thought to

first eat an artichoke?

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With the stickers and the fuzz

and they're absolutely delicious.

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But how did they figure that out?

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I'm really curious about that as

well, because there's some foods we,

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have to eat, cooked or we can't eat.

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Cooked or shouldn't so that's really

interesting that you do get into some of

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that history while you're on these trips.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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We do.

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We do.

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We get into, I mean, we get in the history

as well as how they're grown and 'cause

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we like to take people out into the

fields, talk with the farmers and the

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winemakers, so we get those stories too.

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you mentioned one of your

upcoming trips is South Africa.

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Why don't you tell everyone

the name of your website?

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Oh, thank you.

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Yes, it's Global Palate Palate, like

the tongue, P-A-L-A-T-E, adventures.com.

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And how many trips a

year do you typically do?

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Well, interesting.

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the double trip to Portugal, and in

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I started out my business 10 years

ago just doing one trip a year

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because it was a side business.

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So we're slowly growing.

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Oh, how many are in a group usually?

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We have had two groups that were 14, 15,

however I like to keep them at 12 max.

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So I would say depending on the

destination, we're between eight and 12.

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Yeah, that's a good number.

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And we're a mixed group of, a

lot of groups turn out to be

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women only, but most groups have

a few couples of either gender.

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And a lot of women either come

with friends or come on their own.

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And then we make friends our.

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We try to say no one dines alone.

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You can come as a solo on this

trip, but you're not alone.

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Even on the free afternoons,

evenings, we always make sure

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everyone has something to do.

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So you do things outside of

food, obviously you've talked

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about safaris and other things.

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What about.

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If you're not in wine country,

do you explore any of the other

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kinds of alcohol or beverages?

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we are going to Charleston, South Carolina

in February and there, yes, some of the

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wonderful restaurants have wonderful

wine, but it's not a wine producing area,

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but it is known for distilling spirits.

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There are a couple of good distilleries

there, but we're gonna make that

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trip more about the culture.

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And the history and the local foods and

this, we're going to oyster harvesting.

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So we also have done a trip to Scotland

and we did a private trip there.

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And again, that is not a

big wine producing area.

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Of course, probably they don't produce any

wines because of the climate, but there

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are some amazing, whiskeys to taste there.

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So we did a little bit of that.

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And you know what, if someone doesn't

drink, There are people that come on

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our trip that don't drink alcohol at

all, and that's fine because there's

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always other alternatives, right?

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Are you a cook or a chef?

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How did you get into

food in the first place?

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Yeah, that's a good question.

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I don't cook a lot.

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I like to cook.

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I prefer, restaurants and learning about.

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Reading cookbooks, but I got into this

because I've spent my whole career

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in agriculture marketing specializing

in the food service industry, so

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the restaurant industry, all parts

of the, food service industry and

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working with chefs and restaurant

chains to independent restaurants.

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And some of my clients in that

world, we set up tours for chefs

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to come see the berry fields or the

citrus orchards and or we might take

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media people out into the fields.

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So it had some similarities and

that's where the idea was born for me.

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Do you garden at home or did

you when you were younger?

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My mother is a really good gardener.

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No, I'm not.

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I have no green thumb, but you're really

interested in the entire process, Yes.

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I fascinate one.

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Favorite things to do in the world is

to walk through a field and get my boots

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muddy and listen to farmers talk because

they are a special group of people.

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Definitely.

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Absolutely.

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And, I, it can't be easy.

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I look at all the work

that they must go through.

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Oh, no, it's not easy at all.

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And, yeah.

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they need, a lot of support and, a

lot of them are family businesses.

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People don't realize that

it's a 24 7 business.

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Yeah.

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And you're dependent on mother nature too.

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Exactly.

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What do you want people to come away with

when they're done with one of your trips?

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Hmm.

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It's like, well, that's a good question.

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I would say two things off

the top of my head, of course.

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A better understanding of the

country that they just left the,

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the culture and the food, of course.

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But I love for them to have

those memories that they bring

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up to me a few years later.

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Remember that beekeeper we met?

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He was so funny.

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Or maybe the ring, remember

the sheep farmer we met?

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But the second part that I really love

is the people that make connections.

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That come on these trips and that don't

know each other and go away of friends.

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I see them becoming Facebook connected

and traveling together on future trips

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or asking if so and so is coming.

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I love connecting people and so this gives

me a chance to do that because people come

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on these trips and come away with memories

of the location, but also new friends.

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Yeah.

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. As we wrap up, I wanna make sure you

share, your website again and if you

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have any particular trips, coming

up and anything else you wanna add?

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Oh, thank you so much.

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The first one is Charleston,

South Carolina in February, and

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then in May we're going to Japan,

which I'm very excited about.

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And then in, September are the

two Portugal trips, which are sold

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out, but we do have wait lists.

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Sometimes people can't come.

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And then October is South Africa,

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because it takes about a year.

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To plan these trips.

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Yeah.

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And then we have, if people

wanna go to their website

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global palate adventures.com,

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you can join our newsletter.

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And it's just quarterly, but

it announces all the new trips.

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We've done this the last couple of years.

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We let people vote on their favorite

destinations and if we get a lot of

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votes for something, we'll like, oh,

let's look into running the, that trip.

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So that'll come out soon.

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Okay.

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I have a quick question about Japan first.

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So when I think of Japan and

food, I, there's a whole bunch

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of things going through my head.

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. So do you know what some

of the focus will be?

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Yes.

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We're gonna take a deep dive

into all of it because we're

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gonna start with Food Mar.

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We do a lot of food

markets and street food.

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our first day is going to be going

to a Tokyo market where they have

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everything and we're going to.

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Try it all.

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Of course there's gonna be sushi,

but then there's gonna be so many

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things, people that are gonna be new.

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Even if you don't like seafood, there's

plenty of chicken, beef veggies of

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course too, but it'll be heavily

on the seafood savory pancakes.

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They have a lot of cultural

foods we are not even familiar

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with, so I'm excited about that.

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Street foods are probably a great way

because that's when you really see

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what the locals are eating, don't you?

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Yes.

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Yes.

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And they're fresh.

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They're making them right before

your eyes, so there's no mystery

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of the back of the house.

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You see it all.

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That's right.

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You know what's going on.

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Alright, well, . Thank you

so much for being here.

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I think it sounds interesting.

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I'm gonna go on at least one trip.

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I don't know which one yet, thank

you so much for being here, Susan.

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Globalpalateadventures.com.

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And you can help vote on where to go

next, which I think is a fabulous idea.

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So thank you.

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Thank you so much, Karen.

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This was very fun.

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I appreciate it.

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All right.

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You're welcome.

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All right.

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Bye-bye everyone.