Adventure Travel Podcast - Big World Made Small · Jason Elkins - Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Marketing

Adventure Travel with Karl Wilder - The Chef Tours

·1 hr 13 min

1. Adventure Travel Podcast - Big World Made Small focuses this episode on Adventure Travel with Karl Wilder - The Chef Tours. 2. Jason Elkins hosts Karl Wilder, the founder and director of The Chef Tours, and Wilder matters because he designs and leads chef-centered food tours. 3. The episode asks what a chef-led tour looks like when the group is capped at six guests and the chef tells the story personally. 4. Wilder says The Chef Tours grew out of work at Eating Europe and Secret Food Tours, then expanded through Seville, Istanbul, Berlin, Mexico City, and Paris. 5. He explains that the company avoids scripts and lets each chef share food, friends, and city-specific stories. 6. He says Berlin tours can include a 90-minute cultural walk followed by a four- to six-course tasting menu paired with wine. 7. He describes the Paris daytime tour as a six-hour sequence of breakfast, market shopping, a multi-course dinner, a cheese plate, bubbles, and dessert. 8. Wilder says the guest cap is usually six, and the format varies from couples to singles to private groups. 9. He says single travelers are welcome, and the company sells single tickets instead of turning the concept into a separate product. 10. Wilder identifies the usual guests as people from the U.S., Canada, or Australia, often 50 to 60 years old, who want something different from standard tours. 11. He says one recent guest asked to turn dinner into a class, so he went into the kitchen and filled sausage casings by hand. 12. Wilder says some guests want to chop, grind, and twist sausage, while others prefer to stand with wine and watch the process. 13. He traces his cooking to a mother who baked but did not like making dinner, plus a grandmother who cooked well and taught him early. 14. He says he was cooking family meals by age 10 and learned to cook partly because he disliked canned asparagus. 15. Wilder recalls his first brownie failure from the Betty Crocker children's cookbook, when he used coffee grounds instead of brewed coffee and later got a correction letter with two $1 bills. 16. He also remembers writing Julia Child about baguettes, receiving a reply about French hard red wheat flour, and later getting a postcard that read, “Bravo chef.” 17. Wilder says New Orleans shaped him, including pickled fried chicken and po' boys topped with crushed potato chips. 18. He says living in Italy for three years taught him more than culinary school, because he moved from kitchen to kitchen while working around dubbing jobs. 19. The interview is casual and story-driven, with Wilder and Elkins trading memories, specific dishes, and travel anecdotes. 20. Listeners who like food history, small-group travel, and chef stories will get the most from it; listeners who want a tight destination guide may skip it.

As heard by us

A travel conversation that lets the story unfold at its own pace.

Carl Wilder reads as a practiced guest, with a background that runs through voice work, New York hotel shifts, and a long stretch in the industry.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Hear a Chef Tours founder trace a winding route from voice work to New York hotel shifts.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify