Due to a professional event I need to attend in Melbourne which has just been rescheduled from February to early June, I have made the decision to move my trip to France right after it.

So now the Bordeaux/Aquitaine tour will take place from 11/06-18/06/2022,
and the Provence tour will be 25/06-02/07/2022, as this will ensure we are in full lavender season, lucky you!
Bookings have been updated accordingly on our web shop.

Go to our Promenades Culinaires page for itinerary, bookings and T&C.
​Only 6 lucky people! 200 euros fully refundable deposit to reserve your seat!

New tours dates are now firmed up and bookings are open for our three upcoming tour:

”Christmas in Provence”                                                 11/12-18/12/2021
”Bordeaux Gastronomique”.                                            28/05-04/06/2022
”Provence & Lavender”.                                                  11/06-18/06/2022

Itineraries, bookings and T&Cs can be accessed via button below:  
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Travel restrictions in and out of Australia, France and the USA still in place for months to come, we have decided that it was near impossible to run our “Promnades Culinaires” i Provence and Aquitaine in May/June 2021.

At this point, we are still planning to run with the programmes in September/October and will review late June/early July. Stay tuned!
You can book in confidence with only a 200 euros/pax deposit, which is 100% refundable if we don’t go ahead with the tours.
Depending on the situation 60 days prior to departure, we may extend that offer if YOU cannot attend but WE still run the tour(s).
We want you to feel totally comfortable to book, so we can take an informed decision later on.
Cross fingers, we can still go later in the year!
Thanks for your support and understanding.

​Jean-Marie

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Easy enough now! Buy this beautiful book of the 50 photographs taken by Jean-Marie Lière, your tour guide and a third generation photographer.

It is a hardcover coffee table book for your guests and friends to browse while you could pretend to have visited all these stunning places and delicious meals and wines...

It will take about 3 weeks to reach you once we have your delivery address.
We will ask you once you have placed your order, by clicking the button 

The French Chef Joël Robuchon, who rebelled against the stuffy world of fine dining, elevated mashed potato into an art form, and built up a culinary empire across the world, has died aged 73.
Named the “chef of the century” by Gault et Millau in 1990, Robuchon was both a highly disciplined perfectionist and a kitchen rebel who became famous for cooking mashed potato so exquisitely that critics described eating it as an overwhelmingly “emotional” experience.
Robuchon went from working-class roots to young stardom in the 1970s Paris world of fine dining, where eye-watering prices, starched tablecloths and silver cutlery were the norm. But he was credited with changing the rules of French cooking and restoring heartiness to the stark dishes of nouvelle cuisine.

He believed it was not the tiny sculpted portions on platters that should matter to diners, but hearty and simple dishes – truffle tart, creamed cauliflower, langoustine ravioli – cooked without mixing too many flavours at once, and sourcing the best produce.
He did not shy away from luxury products such as caviar, but his food was described as simple because he preached the use of only three or four ingredients in most dishes, and his goal was always to show off their flavours.
During his first 30 years in leading restaurants, he built up a stellar reputation, a long list of Michelin stars and prizes in the upper echelons of fine French cooking.
Robuchon was credited with transforming restaurant tradition with his notion of ateliers (workshops) – intimate restaurants where diners sat at a counter surrounding the kitchen.
There was no dress code and no reservations, even if the queues were vast. Guy Job, who worked with Robuchon, called this “three-star food with stainless steel cutlery and glass glasses, not crystal ones”.
Over the next 20 years, Robuchon built up a multimillion-euro global empire of 39 establishments, from fine restaurants to clubs. In 2016, he held a world record 32 Michelin stars. This year, he still had 31 stars, including five three-star restaurants. He owned restaurants in cities including Paris, Monaco, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Tokyo and Bangkok.
He was extremely competitive, a perfectionist who asked a lot of his staff. The British chef Gordon Ramsay described working for him as like working for the special forces, accusing Robuchon of once throwing a plate of langoustine ravioli at him for not cooking it properly.
Robuchon later admitted to an interviewer that the incident took place, but insisted it was the only time he had thrown a plate of food.
Our own Guillaume Brahimi has brought to Australia the famous mashed potato he learned with Joël Robuchon
The French president Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Robuchon’s global standing as an innovative chef adored worldwide. “Joel Robuchon’s style was above all about a fundamental, almost obsessional, focus on the quality of produce,” said a statement from the president’s office, lauding the perfectionism that turned the simplicity of his dishes into “accomplished harmony”.

This tribute has been collated from various public sources,

Beth and Hayden runs an award winning low density poultry farm on the mid North Coast of New South Wales, just South of Bellingen. Here is their story!

Paul Bocuse died yesterday a few days short of his 92th birthday...The inventor of ‘nouvelle cuisine’ and the most active promoter of French gastronomy around the World has lived a full life, full of joy, generosity and love.
I will attempt to translate the tribute written by acclaimed Chef Jean Imbert in his Instagram page. He had trained with Bocuse as many others around the World, including our own Philippe Mouchel in Melbourne, who opened the first Bocuse restaurant abroad in Japan.
So here we go:
"Mr Paul,
My thoughts are with your family and your kitchen brigades.
When I was young, I didn’t want to become a cook, I was playing at being Paul Bocuse.
I was ordering copper pans for Christmas to emulate you. At 15, when I discovered your cooking school in Lyon, I immediately knew I needed to join to learn how to cook, and nowhere else.... Your school was not short of amazing: sometimes you would pop in, we could talk to you and exchange ideas, you would dedicate toques to some of us - mine is well hidden...
people will talk about your recipes forever, like the famous VGE soup, the ‘nouvelle cuisine’ etc, but for me you were first and foremost, an ‘aubergiste’ in the most noble sense of the word. With my family, we would come for Christmas lunch in Collonges, and my best memories come back, you sitting at our table to share some bubbles and then you would give us a tour of your kitchen, and it was magical!
And it was not only for us, or your regulars, you would do this randomly for anybody, you were receiving people ‘chez vous’, in your house really, to show them your passion, thevregional,produce you were using, introducing us to your sous-chefs, etc...
It is that attitude of sharing and humility that you were showing your grandeur as a man.
To go along with the wishes of your family, friends and team, I will advocate personally with our President - Emanuel Macron - for a national tribute, as I far as I know there is no other Chef had such a privilege in the history of our country. Maybe it is my Chef’s heart which speaks, but I believe nobody else has promoted our values - and our gastronomy - like you have done for over 50 years! thank you Monsieur Paul"

Inspired by a dish I was served last Friday in Shellharbour, I decided to film for you my own implementation of this fusion recipe. It was delicious! Now you can try your hand at it. It is simple, quick and will impress your guests!