Lotus Culinary Travel Introduces Cooking Vacations and Culinary Immersions in Asia
Pioneering Culinary Travel Provider Launches China Tours
July 2008----The first boutique travel provider in China specializing exclusively in gastronomy, Lotus Culinary Travel announces the launch of its cooking vacations and culinary immersions in the capitals of Asia’s regional cuisines. Teaming with local culinary experts, Lotus makes it possible for the first time for small groups and independent travelers to get an authentic introduction to regional cuisine through a full range of unique food experiences.
Lotus Culinary Travel provides excusive entrée to the heart of a city’s culture—its kitchens—as the focus of a luxurious culinary adventure. Guests will embark on a tasting tour that ranges from renowned kitchens to neighborhood favorites and meet with chefs, farmers and food writers. The key to the Lotus experience is hands-on cooking classes taught by Asia’s top chef-instructors. Designed specifically for Lotus, the classes are adaptable to all levels of cooking enthusiasts and enable travelers to dive into local life while learning skills that will last a lifetime.
Our intimate, insider tours are offered most times of the year on request for private and small groups. These three-day culinary immersions are designed to fit into any Asia itinerary, from a weekend getaway to a stop on a whole-Asia tour. We also arrange custom culinary tours of any length, using only the finest hotels.
Our China immersion tackles the world’s oldest, greatest and most misunderstood cuisine. Taking the road less traveled, we head straight for the country's Wild West, Sichuan province. Its capital, Chengdu, may be a well-kept travel secret in the West but is revered in China as the most enticing food city on the mainland.
In Chengdu, guests will experience the region’s incomparable food culture led by local experts and master chefs from the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine, the country’s top culinary school, and the Museum of Sichuan Cuisine, an exquisite private collection of local culinary history. They’ll sample the best of the region's unique dining styles—from "little eats" to hotpot to country cooking to banquet feasts—and learn about the ingredients that make it special by visiting markets, organic farms and artisan producers of quintessential Sichuan products.
We at Lotus Culinary are terribly saddened by the loss in Sichuan province due to the May 12 earthquake. However we will continue with our fall tours because the city of Chengdu itself was little damaged and because we strongly believe that what Sichuan most needs is the quick return of its many tourists. Travelers will find Chengdu to be the same extraordinarily inviting city it always has been, with a culture focused on food and leisure. Lotus Culinary Travel will donate a percentage of tour profits to earthquake relief and, indefinitely, to programs that assist women and girls in Sichuan.
Lotus Culinary Travel was founded in 2007 by Taylor Holliday, an arts and travel journalist who specializes in culinary travel, in order to share her discoveries and connections with other food-obsessed travelers. Previously Ms. Holliday spent a decade as an arts, culture and food editor at The Wall Street Journal in New York City. Not your typical tour guides, Lotus Culinary’s China manager, Rose Nickel, and host, Ping Wu, are Sichuanese professionals who lived and studied in the U.S. before returning to Chengdu to be close to the food they most love. Interpreters of both language and culture, they are ideal guides to the real Sichuan.
Contact Taylor Holliday at [email protected]
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