New Celebrity Chef Cycling Trips In Italy Announced For 2023

Active travel is surging in popularity right now, as I have written about extensively here at Forbes, thanks in part to huge participation increases in activities like hiking and cycling over the pandemic. Interest in culinary travel has been growing steadily for years, fueled by the greatly increased television and social media coverage of food, food and travel, and celebrity chefs. Active and culinary are two of the hottest trends in leisure travel, and they converge nicely on a number of trips, but especially the Chef’s Bike Tour series from Boston-based cycling and hiking tour operator and Italy specialist Tourissimo.

For years, Tourissimo has hosted this series of trips led by acclaimed chefs, but it just keeps getting better and better, and the 2023 lineup was just announced, with more star power than ever before. If active travel and food – and maybe Italy too – are passions of yours, it’s worth checking out. Major industry publication Cycling Weekly just made Tourissimo’s Sardinia Chef trip its cover feature. Each chef leads a tour in a different region, and guests get to interact daily with food celebrities they might only see otherwise on TV, joining them for cooking classes, food production tours, special meals – and pedaling on the road.

Some are repeat trip leaders who host tours in different places each years, like famed James Beard and Julia Child Award-winner Mary Sue Milliken, back for her sixth tine, after Sicily, Sardinia and other areas. Next October she will be tackling Southern Italy’s Puglia region – the epicenter of Italy’s famous extra virgin olive oil production.

Milliken is a cookbook author, co-founder of the Border Grill restaurants, co-star of television’s long running Too Hot Tamales series and winner of countless awards. “I’ve been counting down the days until I can be back on my bike, pedaling and eating my way through another beautiful region of Italy,” Milliken told me. “Tourissimo pulls out all the stops, ensuring you sample the absolute best of the local cuisine. What could be better than guilt-free eating that comes from the workout you achieve every day? Combine that with being out in nature and surrounded by good company, and you’ve got yourself a little slice of heaven.”

Joining her in the lineup is another culinary legend, Gabrielle Hamilton, on her very first Tourissimo tour, this one to red hot Sardinia in June. Hamilton is chef/owner of New York City’s acclaimed Prune and has beaten Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America, won four James Beard Awards, has authored both cookbooks and the New York Times bestselling memoir Blood, Bones and Butter, and has written about food for everyone from the New Yorker to GQ to Vogue and all the mainstream food magazines including Food + Wine, Bon Appetit and Saveur. Her work has been selected for eight different annual editions of the Best Food Writing anthology.

The Friuli Tour will be led by Brooke Williamson, a returning Tourissimo alum, winner of both Top Chef and the Food Network’s very first Tournament of Champions, and the youngest woman ever invited to cook at the James Beard House. She and her husband operate several Los Angeles area restaurants and food concepts including Hudson House.

The tour of Emilia Romagna, Italy’s most food-centric region, home to the twin gastronomy capitols Parma and Bologna, Modena’s Balsamic vinegar, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, prosciutto di Parma, the number one restaurant in the world, FICO Eataly world and much more, will be led by Italian chef – and longtime cycling guide – Federica Luppi, who learned to cook the regional cuisine here from her grandmother and personally designed the itinerary.

The Chef Tour itineraries are mostly in June and October, and are detailed on the Tourissimo website, but each day typically offers multiple options for length and difficulty, and these trips are open to cyclists of all abilities, and even non-cycling companions – as long as they have a hearty appetite.