Tour de Forks Celebrates 20 Years of Culinary Travel
One of the primary goals of travel, besides rest and relaxation, is to get acquainted with cultures dissimilar to your own. There is nothing better than immersing yourself in the people, the history, and especially, the cuisine of a foreign country. Tour de Forks, now celebrating its 20th year in business, embraces the idea of immersing yourself in a country’s culture through food and curates trips for its clients to do just that.
Founded by the New York-based lesbian couple Melissa Joachim and Lisa Goldman, the pair sought to ‘do something they loved’ based on the advice of a friend. The result was Tour de Forks, a boutique culinary travel company committed to experiential and sustainable travel.
The duo enlisted the help of out celebrity chef, Anita Lo (Top Chef, Iron Chef), to lead their group expeditions where she uses her culinary skills to teach their guests about their destination’s local food and how to prepare it.
When asked why she chose to work with Tour de Forks Chef Lo said: “Here was a chance to combine two of my favorite things in life – travel and food – with friends that I adored who share in those passions. I really can’t imagine a better job. I love teaching and on each trip, I get to teach a hands-on cooking class using local ingredients that we’ve often foraged, harvested, or caught. And if I discover a new ingredient I haven’t used before I get to play with it and present it to the small groups that go on these trips who have really all been wonderful, adventurous, and curious people. I’ve made lasting connections with many of them—and that is priceless.”
With such a glowing recommendation we just had to get to know Melissa and Lisa ourselves. The following is a transcript of the conversation I had with this wonderfully knowledgeable and charming couple.
Vacationer Magazine: Hi Melissa and Lisa! Thanks so much for joining us. You’ve said in other interviews that a treasured piece of advice that you had received was that you should ‘do what you love’. I was wondering, how did each of you come to love international cuisine enough to make it your business?
Melissa Joachim (MJ): I’m originally from Australia, as you probably noticed from my accent. Australians love to travel and I traveled from a very young age. I mean, obviously, I love to travel, but meals were things that really stuck in my mind, they were the things that I remembered from a destination. I know my mother was a very good cook and she tried a lot of different cuisines, and I developed a palate that way.
Lisa Goldman (LG): When we had both lost our jobs, it was around the dot com bust and we decided, well, let’s start our own business. And that’s when the person said, well if you’re going to start a business, do what you love to do. So, we sat around making a list of what we loved, and the top three things were travel, eating, and cooking. We just had to put it all together.
When we would go to Australia, Melissa had all these chef friends and we would have the most amazing experiences, and people would tell us “Gosh, we’d love to travel like you guys travel”. And so we just decided, maybe there’s something to that. So, when we started a business, we made culinary our focus. It came from what we love to do.
And what types of trips do you offer at Tour de Forks?
MJ: We offer customized trips for travelers and also plan excursions that we host ourselves which are led by Chef Anita Lo, former owner of the restaurant Anissa. It was a Michelin-starred restaurant in NYC and she’s a celebrity chef.
That’s amazing how did you come to work with her?
LG: Anita came on our first trip to Australia, and we became good friends, so, when Anita closed her restaurant, it was a perfect fit. She loves to travel and teach, and she loves leading the groups.
Tell me more about her role in these excursions.
LG: Anita does a cooking class on every group trip where she will give her spin on the local cuisine using local ingredients.
MJ: It’s amazing. And she’s such a wonderful generous, funny, smart, easy-to-be-with teacher.
We have one destination that we go to every year where Anita really gets to shine, and that’s in the Yucatan outside of Merida, Mexico. We go to a restored Hacienda. There are only 9 rooms, and there is a teaching kitchen.
LG: So when we go there, our guests have cooking classes every day, not just from Anita, but from local chefs. And then the grand finale is Anita doing her spin on the local cuisine from everything that we’ve learned along the way.
MJ: And sometimes she will do a lesson with a local chef as well, as a team. It’s fun when that happens too.
Your website says that you can discover a destination, its history, and its culture through food. Can you expand on that? What’s a place you’ve learned the most about through cuisine?
MJ: A really good example is Sicily, and one of our people in Sicily, Mary Taylor Simeti, is a food historian. She has written books on Sicilian food. She used to write for the New York Times, and for The Guardian.
She takes the group on a market tour. There are about four open-air markets in Palermo, and she guides us through them and gives us a history lesson about the different civilizations that have passed through and left their “food mark” on Sicily. The Carthaginians were there, the Greeks were there, the Romans, the Moors, the French, and every civilization has left its individual mark.
Wow. That’s fascinating!
MJ: It’s brilliant, she’s absolutely brilliant. She’s actually retired now but we go and visit her at her farm. She has a wonderful produce farm, and her daughter is a winemaker.
So, one way or another, we have fantastic history lessons wherever we go. We meet all the local producers, local chefs, and local historians when we can find them. So, if you’re into food, if you’re into going deep, it’s a great way to travel.
I know you guys have an eastern Long Island trip coming up too. That would be interesting to learn about New York through its food and at Mama’s Farm.
MJ: It’s really great. We go to an oyster farmer, and he walks us through the whole process of growing the oysters and harvesting them. And then, of course, we eat them right out of the water. There’s nothing better.
Yummy! With all the traveling you guys have done, is there a favorite destination you have and if so, can you provide a corresponding favorite dish?
LG: Wow, that’s a hard one!
MJ: For me, I want to say my favorite destination is Sicily. It’s a really beautiful place.
In terms of favorite food, Anita cooked for us. We were at Mount Etna staying at a little boutique hotel and during the day we (the group) went down to Catania which has a fantastic fish market, and she bought some wonderful seafood and fish. And that night she prepared the most–
LG: She found Bottarga, it’s a tuna egg and they’re big! Usually, they’re dried and you grate them onto the pasta. It was a big surprise to find a fresh one, we’d never seen it before. And then Anita made this dish with the bottarga and pasta that I still dream about it.
MJ: The best pasta meal! I’m a big pasta fan but this was just the most divine meal I ever had.
LG: Before that meal, the pasta sarde (pasta with sardines), in Sicily, was my favorite dish. The first time I ever ate it, it was like there weren’t enough meals in the day for me. It was a little different in every place where we had it.
MJ: Yeah, every village has its own interpretation. And they all think theirs is the best.
I’m part Sicilian, I can verify that we are competitive over our food! (Laughs) So, switching gears a bit, I read that the two of you have been a couple for 26 years and I just have to ask- what is your secret and how do you separate work and real life?
MJ: We don’t! (All laugh)
LG: You know what, the beauty of what we do is that it’s just so much fun and so wonderful and we get to meet such amazing people, many who become friends. It’s like getting to spread the love.
MJ: Yeah, and we cap our groups at 12, so it’s a small group. And people tend to bond over a meal and a nice glass of wine.
LG: And my love for Melissa just keeps growing and growing.
MJ: Aww. And mine too.
LG: It’s really fun to have all these adventures together.
MJ: We don’t always travel together. We’ve got a dog with special needs–
LG: We’re like magnets for really cute dogs with really big issues. And our latest, she’s deaf and has severe separation anxiety. So there have been some trips where we’ve had to divide and conquer so that one person’s home with Little Lulu. But now we’re securing a better team of dog sitters so we can both go again.
Awww Little Lulu!!! How precious. I’m glad you’ll both be traveling again because it’s the 20th anniversary of Tour de Forks! I was wondering if you guys have any plans to mark the occasion and also, who came up with the name “Tour de Forks” because it’s absolutely perfect considering what you do! (Laughs)
MJ: The name was the result of a brainstorming session with copious amounts of wine!
LG: It just came to us and we just knew it when we landed on it. It still brings a smile to our faces. And the Sicily tours have been our celebration because that’s one of our favorite destinations. Last year we did Sicily East. This May we’re doing West.
Sounds like the perfect way to celebrate. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us, and here is to another 20 years of Tour de Forks!
