News

Fabulous to be at the launch of Our Berry Kitchen, a professionally created and finished cookbook featuring more than 150 delicious recipes collected from families and friends of Berry Public School, as well as some of Berry’s top chefs and local business owners (Foodscape is in there!). The book is $35 and all proceeds from sales will go to the school to enrich the school environment and support school initiatives and programs. The book is available at local retail outlets in Berry and Nowra or if you are a bit further afield you can order copies online here.

We are buzzing from the thrill of being awarded SILVER for the Tourism Small Business Operator category and BRONZE in the Tours and Transport Operators category at the 2013 South Coast Tourism Awards for Excellence. Given we were up against some long established and highly regarded tourism businesses in both of our categories we are very proud of this acknowledgement. We also take this opportunity to thank the many wonderful producers, specialty retailers, growers and wineries that we partner with to make our tours possible. It’s a pleasure to work with them and provide an insight into the ‘fabulousness’ of food and wine along the beautiful South Coast. We also congratulate our friends at South Coast Holidays for their GOLD award.

What a 10th anniversary celebration it was for the Shoalhaven Coast Winter Wine Festival. As we can’t offer our usual tour experience, we took the opportunity to partake in the fun and activities. The places we visited were all pumping with people enjoying the sunshine, the coast, the wines and the atmosphere. Visitation was reported to be the highest ever. If you missed it pencil in the long weekend for next year!

In December 2013 we played host to Lorraine Elliott, the foodie behind the blog Not Quite Nigella, and her husband Mr NQN. Lorraine was telling us she’d been putting the finishing touches to her book, which was released late last month. Titled ‘Not Quite Nigella – my path to happiness through baking and blogging’ the book has already been the staff pick at the Dymocks Sydney City store and is in the top 10 book sales at David Jones. I’ve just started tucking in to my copy and am thoroughly enjoying the read.

We were delighted to host a small contingent of international travel journalists and media as part of the Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE) 2013. This annual event is our largest tourism showcase profiling Australian tourism businesses to international buyers and media and we provided the guests with a ‘taste’ of our Foodie’s Indulgence tour as part of a 4-day South Coast food and wine trail.

Thursday 21 March saw us host a special ‘Foodie’s Indulgence’ tour as part of a program of activities celebrating NSW Senior’s Week. We were fully booked within a week of the program being released and had a wonderful day. The group were all locals from the Illawarra and Shoalhaven and they just loved getting an insight into what’s happening with food and wine in their own backyard.

In mid-March 2013 we had a Foodscape first hosting a bunch of chefs from Singapore. Head chef and owner of Artichoke Cafe & Bar and Overdoughs bakery, Bjorn Shen, got in touch with us to see if he could bring his team down to the South Coast for a day exploring some farms and foodie destinations. The group was visiting Sydney and spent their last full day in Australia checking out Buena Vista Farm, the market vegie garden of Feast Farms, South Coast Providores, Pompadour’s Chocolate House and Two Figs Winery. We enjoyed pies for lunch from Milkwood Bakery and they even dipped their toes in the ocean at Seven Mile Beach before heading home! It was a fabulous group and a wonderful day.

At the 2012 South Coast Tourism Awards held at Merimbula in August, Foodscape Tours was awarded a Highly Commended in the Tour and Transport category. We were delighted with this result especially as we were up against some long established and well regarded tour operators. Our congratulations go to the winner of this category, Dolphin Watch of Jervis Bay. This was our first foray into the world of awards so it was encouraging firstly to be a finalist on debut, and then to come away with this special acknowledgement!