Welcome To Food & Drink Destinations
Our Mission
Food & Drink Destinations is the ultimate guide on how to travel for food and drink or eat and drink at home. We provide tips on what and where to eat and drink worldwide. Then, we bring what we learn home with tips on how to eat and drink well at home and make cooking easier.
Our mission is met when our readers learn:
- What to eat and drink when traveling to a new destination. What are the true local dishes and beverages for that city or region?
- Where to eat and drink when traveling. How do you find the local, authentic restaurants and bars and how to avoid the tourist traps.
- How to cook authentic and tasty recipes at home, including traditional recipes and our favorite cooking tips and products.
Travel Experience – Why Trust Our Travel Tips?
Amber and Eric Hoffman have traveled to over 70 countries together, making them veritable food and drinkĀ focused travel experts. Their love and passion for food and cooking go back many years where they have managed to:
- Take dozens of cooking classes, including pasta-making courses Italy and empanada making courses in Argentina.
- Take dozens of food tours, from half-day and full-day food tours to a culinary tour in Morocco.
- Amber’s written two culinary travel guides to some of our favorite European destinations.
- Make it a point of learning as much as we can about food, cooking, and the history of local cuisine.
- To learn about contemporary cooking and molecular gastronomy, check out Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and The Sorcerer’s Apprentices, about cooking at El Bulli in Catalonia.
Published Culinary Guides
Amber published her first travel book about Myanmar called Exploring Myanmar: Traveling the Dusty Roads of the New Burma.
With our years of experience traveling through Europe, Amber published two culinary guides to two of our favorite destinations.
Both guides are available in hard copy and ebook formats on Amazon now.
Food Traveler’s Guide To The Costa Brava
We lived for three years in Girona, in Catalonia, in Northeastern Spain. Girona is the jumping-off point for the Costa Brava.
Amber worked with the Costa Brava Tourism Board to create a culinary travel guide to the region. The goal of this food and travel guide is to help travelers better understand what and where to eat within the region.
If you are looking for a new culinary destination that is only about an hour outside ofĀ Barcelona, check outĀ The Food Travelerās Guide to The Costa Brava: From Traditional Catalan Cuisine to Modern Gastronomy.Ā
Learn more about the Costa Brava in our Catalan Food Guide.
Food Traveler’s Guide To Emilia Romagna
Our love for Italian food is why we continue to travel to Emilia Romagna, Italy, time and time again.
Bologna, Modena, Parma, and other towns and villages are where some of the top Italian food products originate. Itās a great region to explore outside of Rome, Florence, and Venice, the āBig 3.ā
If looking to get off the beaten path in Italy, check outĀ The Food Travelerās Guide to Emilia Romagna: How to taste the history and tradition of Italy.Ā
Learn more about the cuisine of Emilia Romagna, and some of its typical Italian products, like mortadella and Parma Ham.
Experience With Drinks: Wine, Craft Beer, and Whiskey
- We often are asked if we would ever open our own winery. We’ve taken over 120 wine tours over the last decade, so we know how to make wine, but we will leave it up to the experts. Our wine tourism experience includes numerous classes and courses on how to taste wine.
- While traveling, we’ve also taken dozens of drink tours, including craft breweries, gin distilleries, and whiskey distilleries, particularly in Ireland and Scotland.
- We’ve learned how to blend wine and blend our own Scottish whisky.
- Amber also wrote a book on wine tourism in the Emporda wine region in conjunction with the Costa Brava Tourism Board and the DO Emporda Wine Route.
Cooking At Home
Although we started this blog to help people travel for food and drink, we quickly learned that we wanted to share our cooking tips as well. This became particularly important when travel slowed and we all started spending more time at home, cooking and baking.
Over the years, we’ve lived in a half dozen countries with different local cuisine and have cooked in dozens of different kitchens. We know the kitchen products we love to use and the ones we miss when traveling. We wanted to share our experience with our food-loving readers and home chefs.
How We Review And Rate Products āļø
We only recommend brands we trust. We try to recommend kitchen products we’ve owned or used personally and we offer alternatives. We choose these alternative products based on recommendations from other food bloggers and chefs, sommeliers, and winemakers.
We conduct thorough research on the company, how the products are made, and whether they are a good value for home chefs. This allows us to offer competitive analysis, provide pros and cons of various products, and ensure you are purchasing quality products for your home.
- Some of the kitchen brands we love the most include 360 Cookware, UnoCasa, Calphalon, Ninja, and Instant Pot.
- For wine and drink products, we love Wine Enthusiast, VinGarde, and Danby.
- We often recommend purchasing products from Amazon because of the variety of kitchen and homeware brands they carry.
- Sometimes, we recommend buying a product directly from the manufacturer when we know it’s a brand we trust.
Learn more here.
Speaking Engagements on Culinary Travel
After over seven years of writing about food and drink, weāve developed a bit of an expertise. Our goal is always to help culinary travelers seek new and unique gastronomy experiences. This includes helping tourism organizations learn how to attract culinary travelers.
Over the years, Amber has spoken at numerous conferences and events across Europe and Asia. In addition to speaking about digital media, her focus has been on promoting culinary travel.
