On Air with Avanti Destinations
Welcome to On Air with Avanti Destinations! If you're a Travel Advisor who is looking to stay ahead of the game, you've tuned in to the right place. Get ready to have the lowdown on hot destinations, what's booking like crazy, and helpful tips that would turn curiosity into bookings. Ready to dive in? Let's go!
On Air with Avanti Destinations
Ep9: Incredible Food in Unexpected Places
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Welcome to the eight episode of Avanti's podcast: 'On Air with Avanti Destinations'!
In episode 8, Gina Bang (Chief of Sales and Marketing) sits down with Katherine Jackson (Director of Product and Yield) to make the case that the world's most memorable culinary experiences often happen in places travelers least expect. Hosts Gina and Katherine walk through five European destinations, England (particularly London's world-class Indian food scene and Birmingham's Balti Triangle), France (Marseille's pizza culture rooted in Neapolitan immigration, plus the deep regional food traditions most tourists never reach), the cross-border Basque Region (where Spanish and French culinary traditions converge into something greater than either), Switzerland's Italian-speaking canton of Ticino (where Lugano delivers genuinely Italian cooking against a stunning lakeside backdrop), and Greece (where the real story is the enormous gap between typical tourist food and the hyper-regional, historically rooted cuisine available on a well-crafted itinerary).
Thank you for listening! For more information about Avanti, please go to avantidestinations.com.
Important Links:
Check out our South Korea e-brochure, created in partnership with Korea Tourism Organization.
Thank you for listening! For more information about Avanti, please go to avantidestinations.com.
Welcome to On Air with Avanti Destinations. If you're a travel advisor who is looking to stay ahead of the game, you've tuned in to the right place. Get ready to have the lowdown on hot destinations, what's booking like crazy, and helpful tips that will turn curiosity into bookings. Ready to dive in? Let's go.
SPEAKER_01Let me ask you something. When your client says, I want incredible food on this trip, where does your mind go first? Italy. It's always, always Italy. Right, and that's a great answer. But today we're going to mess with that instinct a lot. Because some of the most extraordinary meals we've ever heard about, meals that people genuinely can't stop talking about, happened nowhere near where you'd expect. And I mean that literally. The best pizza might not be in Italy. The best Indian food might not be in India. The best Italian pasta might not be in Italy.
SPEAKER_02And that's the whole point of today's episode. We're talking incredible food in unexpected locations.
SPEAKER_01I'm Gina Bang, and with me is Catherine Jackson. Today's episode is focused on a really powerful selling tool for advisors. The idea is this great food doesn't follow borders. The world's most memorable culinary moments often happen in places your clients would never think to look.
SPEAKER_02We're going to hit five unexpected destinations in Europe today. For each one, we'll give you the story, the sensory details, and critically, how to turn that into a conversation with your client that actually books a trip. All right, let's go. Here's a question I ask clients who think they know Europe. Name the best Indian food you've ever had. Nine times out of ten, they say something like, Oh, there's this great place near me. And I say, Have you ever had it in London? Because here's the thing, and this is the insight that stops people cold. Some of the best Indian food in the world is in England. Not a version of it, not an approximation. London is, by almost any serious measure, one of the great Indian food cities on earth.
SPEAKER_01Full stop. Brick Lane, Southall, Tooting, these are neighborhoods where you're eating dishes refined over three, four generations of immigration and creativity. Chicken tika masala was arguably invented here. This isn't fusion. This is a cuisine that evolved and took root in English soil and became something entirely its own.
SPEAKER_02And the range is staggering. You've got Michelin-starred modern Indian restaurants sitting alongside 60-year-old curry houses that have never changed a recipe and never needed to. The depth of regional Indian cooking available in London, Kerallan, Punjabi, Gowen, Hyderabaddi, is extraordinary. You genuinely don't need to fly to the subcontinent to access it.
SPEAKER_01It extends beyond London, too. Birmingham has the Balti Triangle, a cluster of restaurants in Smarkhill and Mosley that are genuinely legendary among food obsessives. The Balti, that distinctively fast-cooked aromatic dish served in a thin steel bowl, is essentially a Birmingham invention, and it's about so much more than one cuisine.
SPEAKER_02And it's about so much more than one cuisine. Cornwall produces some of the best seafood on the planet. Crab, lobster, oysters pulled from waters that are extremely clean. Yorkshire has a whole identity built around its food: forced rhubarb, aged Wensleydale, game from the Dales, and Edinburgh has become a serious dining city.
SPEAKER_01The advisor talking point here practically writes itself. Ask your client, have you ever thought about going to England for the food? Watch their face. Then drop it on them. London is one of the world's best Indian food cities. Tell them about Brick Lane at 10 at night, the curry trail through Birmingham, the oyster shacks in Padstow, the rhubarb grown in sheds by candlelight in Yorkshire. You're not selling England the way they expect. You're selling England in a way that surprises them. That's a booking. Alright, here's the deal. I'm going to say something that might start a small war on the internet, but here we go. French pizza may actually be better than Italian. Let me be more precise. If you want the best pizza in the world right now, you might genuinely be looking in the wrong country. Marseille, in the south of France, has developed one of the most serious pizza cultures on earth, and almost nobody outside of France talks about it.
SPEAKER_02Here's the context. Marseille has one of the largest Italian heritage communities in Europe. Waves of Neapolitan and Genoese immigrants came here in the 19th and early 20th centuries and brought their food with them. But then it evolved. It absorbed provencal ingredients, North African influences, the incredible local seafood. What you get is a pizza culture that is technically rigorous and also wildly its own thing. There are pizzerias in the neighborhoods of Lestac and Cours Julian with lines around the block and almost no food tourists in sight.
SPEAKER_01This is the insight that lands beautifully with clients who think they've done it all. They've been to Naples, they've had the pizza, they think they know. And then you tell them, have you tried it in France?
SPEAKER_02And this is the thing about France more broadly. It is almost criminally underrated as a food destination beyond its obvious hits. Everyone knows Paris, everyone knows Bordeaux and Burgundy, but the Avignon Market, the truffle trade in Paragord, the cheesecaves of Roquefort, the bakers of Brittany at six in the morning, this is a country with layers and layers of culinary identity that go deep into every region.
SPEAKER_01Avanti builds France into some of their most beloved itineraries. Market tours in Paris and Avignon, baggage and macaroon baking classes, wine experiences in Burgundy and the Lore. Their gastronomic wonders of France and Spain itinerary is 11 days and hits four cities chosen specifically for their culinary depth. And there's the Paris option, a private dinner with a Parisian family, which is exactly the kind of thing clients can't find on their own and never forget. And if you want pure wow factor with a client who thinks they know France, Marseille. Send them to Marseille for the pizza in the bouillotase. They will come back and they will thank you. The advisor talking point, have you ever had pizza in France? is a genuinely funny question that opens a genuinely great conversation. Follow it with the history and then pivot to the broader France picture. You're reframing a destination they thought they understood. That's powerful. Okay, I think this is a good time to take a quick break. When your clients say they want incredible food on their next trip, don't just think the standards. Think Seoul, South Korea, a city where Italian rose pasta gets a hit of Korean chili paste, where street stalls serve talkbookie at 2 a.m., and where a convenience store stop is genuinely one of the best meals a traveler can have. South Korea doesn't just have great food, it has food that surprises. And that's exactly what your clients are going to talk about when they get home. A South Korean foodie vacation that sneaks up and blows the mind. It's not complicated. It's simply Avanti. To learn more, click the link in this episode's description to check out our South Korea e-brochure, created in partnership with Korea Tourism Organization. And now it's time for fun facts about Avanti's destinations, Korea 1992. A boy band called Seo Taiji and Boys goes on a TV talent show, performs a rap-in-fused pop song, and gets the lowest possible score from the judges. The audience, however, loses its mind. The judges were wrong. K-pop was the future. Before Seo Taiji, Korean pop music was mostly ballads for adults. Slow, sad, respectable. SEO Taiji dragged it kicking and screaming into the era of hip-hop, new jack swing, and teenagers. And guess what? Record labels noticed and started doing something unusual. Training young kids. Not just vocal lessons, but years of dancing, performing, learning languages, and perfecting synchronized choreography until it was basically a martial art. The idol system was born. Now that is a fun fact. Let's get back to our main conversation. Okay, more incredible food in unexpected places. Let me paint a picture. You're standing at a bar in San Sebastian. On the counter in front of you are 30 different pinchos, tiny, perfect bites of food, each one constructed with the precision of a jeweler, anchovies on crusty bread, salt cod with roasted peppers, a single bite of foie gras with a smear of apple. The wine in your glass costs three euros. You are, by almost any measure, eating some of the finest food on earth.
SPEAKER_02And then you drive 45 minutes north, cross into France, and you're in the French Basque country. Bayonne, Biorites, Saint-Jean de Luz, different language on the signs, different wine, but the same underlying food culture now filtered through French culinary technique. The result is something that doesn't exist anywhere else on earth.
SPEAKER_01This is the real story of the Basque region, and it's a story that spans two countries. The Basques have their own language, their own identity, and one of the most extraordinary culinary traditions in the world. What happens when that tradition is expressed through a Spanish lens in San Sebastian and a French lens in Bayonne? You get two distinct expressions of the same brilliant foundation. And together, they create something greater than either country could produce alone.
SPEAKER_02San Sebastian has more Michelin stars per capita than almost any city on Earth. That's not an accident. The Choco culture, private gastronomic societies where chefs and food lovers cook together competitively, obsessively, has produced generations of culinary talent. And that same obsessive attention to ingredients and technique carries across the border.
SPEAKER_01On the French side, you have the bayon ham, one of the great cured meats of Europe, often overshadowed by its Italian and Spanish cousins, but deserving of its own conversation. You have Basque-style fish soups that carry the influence of the Atlantic coast in every spoonful. You have Espilette Pepper, the gentle fruity chili that the French Basques put on everything, and that you cannot find with the same character anywhere else.
SPEAKER_02Avanti's gastronomic wonders of France and Spain itinerary threads this needle beautifully, hitting cities on both sides of the border and letting travelers experience that cross-cultural culinary dialogue firsthand. It's the kind of trip that reframes everything a client thinks they know about both countries.
SPEAKER_01The talking point for advisors is what if I told you there's a region of Europe where French and Spanish cooking meet, and the result is better than either? That question lands every time. Describe the Pinchos Bar in San Sebastian, the Bayonne market at 8 in the morning, the drive across the border where the food changes and somehow gets even better. That's a trip. I think it's time to talk Switzerland. People think cheese, chocolate, watches, alpine scenery.
SPEAKER_02And those people are not wrong, but they're also missing half the picture. Because here's a line that will genuinely stop a client in their tracks. For great Italian food, try Switzerland.
SPEAKER_01I know. I know how that sounds, but hear us out. Southern Switzerland, the canton of Ticino on the border with Italy, is essentially a different country culinarily. The language is Italian, the food is Italian, the light on the lakes looks like something painted by a Renaissance master, but you're still in Switzerland with Swiss trains and Swiss precision. You're getting Italy's flavors at Switzerland's address.
SPEAKER_02Lugano is the city at the heart of this. It sits on Lake Lugano, one of the most beautiful bodies of water in Europe, and it doesn't get nearly the traffic of Como or Garda. The restaurants here serve risotto and handmade pasta that would hold their own in any top Milanese kitchen. And then you walk out and you're back in this ordered, elegant Swiss city. It's the Italian you didn't expect in Switzerland.
SPEAKER_01Avanti's risotto cooking class on the shores of Lake Lugano has become one of their most talked-about European experiences. You're cooking with local chefs, learning the specific technique of the Ticino Risotto, which uses local wine, local rice, and a very particular patience, and you're doing it with the lake right there. And then there's the chocolate.
SPEAKER_02Switzerland has an entire artisanal chocolate culture that runs from factory tours to the private workshops Avanti has added to their European portfolio. A private chocolate making session in Switzerland isn't a tourist gimmick. It's a genuine craft education. You leave knowing things that most chefs don't know.
SPEAKER_01Switzerland is also perfect for the client who's been to Italy many times and wants something adjacent. The line that works is you love Italy. You've done the big cities. Let me show you where Italy goes on vacation and gets to be even more beautiful.
SPEAKER_02What if I told you some of the best Italian cooking in Europe happens in Switzerland on a lake you've never seen, cooked in a class with a view that'll make you forget your phone exists? Instant curiosity. Book the Avanti Lugano experience, and you've sold a trip that your client will describe at dinner parties for years. Next up is Greece. Your clients think they know Greek food. Giros, spanikoptis, spaklava, and they're not wrong, but the version of Greek food that most tourists encounter is a highlight reel, not the real thing. The real thing is something else entirely. It's the mesé culture. Small plates designed for sharing and lasting all evening. It's the hyper-regional variation. Seafood preparation in the Aegean Islands is completely different from Crete, which is completely different from the Peloponnese, which is completely different from Thessaloniki. Greece has a cuisine with as much regional diversity as Italy, and nobody talks about it that way.
SPEAKER_01Athens has quietly become a city that serious food travelers genuinely care about. The street food scene, Suvlaki done right, Kaluri bread rings at six in the morning, Leucomares dripping with honey, is elite. And then there are the Neo-Taverna chefs doing something remarkable, using ancient Greek culinary history as a base and rebuilding it into something entirely contemporary.
SPEAKER_02Avanti's Greece offerings hit this beautifully. Dishes there are cooked the same way they were cooked 300 years ago. That's not marketing copy. That's actually true.
SPEAKER_01The unexpected food angle in Greece is about depth, not surprise. Your client knows they want Greek food. What they don't know is that the version they'll eat on a well-crafted Avanti itinerary with a local guide, a morning market visit, a cooking lesson in a family kitchen on Crete is categorically different from anything they've experienced before.
SPEAKER_02Greece isn't surprising as a food destination. But what most people eat in Greece versus what you can eat in Greece, that gap is enormous. Then describe a morning in a Cretan market, a ceramic bowl of just made DACO, olive oil that tastes nothing like anything they had before.
SPEAKER_01The unexpected here is the depth. Before we wrap up, let's get practical for a minute. We've been talking about stories and reframing destinations, but what does this actually look like when you're sitting across from a client? Here's the framework.
SPEAKER_02Three moves. First, the surprise question. Ask something they don't expect. Did you know London is one of the world's great Indian food cities? Or have you ever had better pizza in France than in Italy? Or did you know Switzerland has an Italian soul? You're not selling yet. You're creating curiosity. Second, the story. Give them one vivid detail, not a list of experiences. One thing. The risotto on the edge of Lake Lugano, the pizza at midnight in Marseille, the Pinchos bar in San Sebastian, where you can't stop at just one, the rhubarb grown in sheds by candlelight in Yorkshire. One image, let it land. Third, the Avanti connection. Tell them it's bookable, customizable, through you. Avanti's InstaQoote tool gives you a full proposal in 90 seconds. You can walk into a client call, have a conversation like this one, and by the end of the meeting have a quoted itinerary ready to share. That's your value.
SPEAKER_01That's the professional edge no OTA can replicate. This isn't just an interesting conversations.
SPEAKER_02Great food doesn't follow borders. We have been conditioned as travelers and as advisors to associate certain foods with certain countries and leave it. But the world is more complicated and more delicious than that. London, one of the world's best Indian food cities, French pizza that rivals and some would say beats the original Italian version. The Basque region, where two food cultures create something better than either alone. Switzerland, where Italy's flavors have found a new address on a stunning lake. And Greece, where the food most tourists eat is barely scratching the surface. These are real places, real experiences, bookable right now through Avanti destinations.
SPEAKER_01Thank you to our listeners for tuning in. To learn more and start building these exclusive experiences into your clients' itineraries, give us a call and speak with one of our travel consultants.