Foodie trips for solo travellers

The best solo travel trips for food lovers

Solo-friendly small group food tour in South Korea

Join like-minded foodies who want to get a real insight into Korea's food culture on Intrepid’s South Korea Real Food Adventure. A local expert guide takes your intimate group (max 12 guests) on an 8-day adventure to truly off-the-beaten-track locations; this may be pulling up at an unassuming roadside restaurant for an intricate banquet beside Korean families celebrating special occasions, winding through a residential estate to learn the art of bulgogi before trekking to a sacred waterfall, and heading into the heart of Seoul’s vibrant student neighbourhood for traditional Korean BBQ. Meet celebrity masters of Korean cuisine, including a TV chef who makes arguably the best kimchi in the country, an 80-year-old gochujang master and a man who grows the sweetest apples in his rural allotment outside the coastal city of Busan. You even stay in a Buddhist temple to sample the world-renowned vegan temple food alongside resident monks, with the unique opportunity to ask a monk questions about their life in the temple over a tea ceremony. intrepidtravel.com

Read Intrepid guide Back Kimyung's guide to South Korean food here.

Cooking holiday in Bologna

The clue’s in the nickname: Bologna is La Grassa (‘the fat one’), Italy’s true home of eating, where food always comes first. This makes the gluttonous city an ideal base for a one-week Cooking Holiday in Bologna with specialist company, Flavours. Staying in a converted farmhouse in the Emilia-Romagna countryside with a small group of fellow foodies, you’ll balance time at the stove preparing traditional dishes – minced pork tortellini, crostini romagnoli, fried petroniana – with strolls around markets and medieval streets, cooking, learning, exploring and eating together. flavoursholidays.co.uk

Solo traveller tour in Georgia & Armenia

Smokey kebabs, golden flatbreads, wood-fired corn, vegetables grilled, stuffed and pickled... Georgian and Armenian cuisines blend Mediterranean and Persian flavours to delicious effect. Titan’s new 12-day tour of the two countries – with a dedicated departure for solo travellers – visits monasteries, mountains and Stalin’s childhood home; it also includes breaking bread at roadside clay ovens, making local dishes at a masterclass in Yerevan and stops at traditional Georgian vineyards to taste the fruits of one of the world’s first wine-producing nations. titantravel.co.uk

Small-group adventure in Mexico

Share a room with a fellow solo and you won’t pay an extra frijole for Explore’s latest Tastes of Mexico tour. The focus of this gastronomic small-group adventure is seeking regional specialities amid the country’s temples. Graze a smorgasbord of street food in Mexico City; try chilli-chocolate mole poblano and pizza-like tlayudas in Oaxaca (Mexico’s culinary capital); eat fresh-fish ceviche on the Yucatán; learn to make perfect tamales; and visit a Maya family for cochinita pibil, a feast of pit-buried roast pork. All washed down with a mezcal or two. explore.co.uk

Small group foodie tour in Jordan

The way to a country’s heart is through its stomach. At least, that’s the conclusion drawn by solo-friendly tour operator Intrepid, which expanded its range of foodie experiences in 2018 to provide more immersive trips. On its six-day Jordan Real Food Adventure that means joining a Bedouin barbecue in the Wadi Rum desert, drinking sheep’s milk with local shepherds, preparing lamb mansaf with a family at Petra (before visiting the site itself) and whipping up your own dinner at Amman’s most innovative cookery school. intrepidtravel.com

Culinary tour in Cambodia

Cambodia is better known for Khmer architecture than culinary excellence. But Gran Turismo’s eight-night Cambodia Culinary Tour aims to prove the country’s cuisine might just be the next big thing among South-East Asian food fans. As well as a luxe double-room-for-one, this eye-opening food tour includes cooking classes with Siem Reap’s finest chefs and learning how to barbecue Khmer-style in a local home. You’ll also explore markets and street food culture, watch palm sugar, rice spirits and fruit parchment being made and, of course, visit Angkor’s matchless temples. grantourismotravels.com

Foodie photography in France

The pleasure of food is all too fleeting. Unless you master the art of capturing it on camera. Wild Photography Holidays’ Rural Burgundy Life & Food Photography Retreat combines the region’s natural bounty and rural vistas with expert tuition in food photography by Niall Benvie. Trips to medieval villages, markets and chestnut forests will provide inspiration as well as props for sessions back at base, the spacious barn of a French château. Afterwards, enjoy delicious meals prepared by co-host Charlotte, a professional chocolatier. wildphotographyholidays.com

Small-group culinary trip in Sweden

There’s no surer way to bond with new companions than by exploring, camping, cooking and eating together. On Much Better Adventures’ five-day, small-group Culinary Kayaking Adventure along Sweden’s eastern Saint Anna Archipelago you’ll all be on the look-out for supper, paddling between pretty isles to forage for mushrooms and berries, and sourcing fish, boar, fruit and veg from local producers. Then learn how to prepare, wild style: your guide-chef will teach everything from pit cooking to traditional Swedish husmanskost (homemade food). muchbetteradventures.com

Foodie walking holiday in Andalucia

A stay amid the sun-baked Alpujarras offers a fine equilibrium: gorge on Andalucían cooking, then work it off with walks around the white-washed villages and olive groves of the Sierra Nevada. Based at lovely Las Chimeneas, a rustic hotel with an organic farm and an excellent kitchen, join Ramblers’ seven-night Ambles in the Alpujarras trips and you can intersperse gentle walks with foraging, paella-making and visits to fish markets, cheesemakers and wine bodegas. Ramblers Walking Holidays’ trips attract a good mix of couples, friends and solos, and lone travellers can save by sharing a room. ramblersholidays.co.uk

Words by Sarah Baxter and Alex Crossley

Images by Edd Kimber, Getty, Rob Streeter, Hiran Thabrew

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