Toronto, Ontario (Jan 7, 2006) – Horizon & Co., one of Canada’s leading boutique travel companies, has launched its new 2007 Epicurean Adventures, a series of culinary journeys built around some of the hottest food destinations and emerging culinary trends for 2007.

“Now that the excesses of Christmas are over, meals featuring creative uses of turkey leftovers are a thing of the past, and New Year resolutions have been made (and in some cases, discarded), we felt that people would be ready to turn their thoughts to travel plans for the coming months” says Norman Howe, one of the owners of Horizon and the resident foodie. “Assuming that eating well featured somewhere on everyone’s list of things to accomplish in 2007, we have a delectable array of unique participatory culinary adventures to whet our travellers’ appetites. From an experiential point of view, our trips cover everything from learning the art of menu planning from the food stylist for Coté Sud Magazine to competing in a cook-off against other teams in an ancient Tuscan kitchen under the watchful eye of a renowned local chef. From a destination point of view, while traditional classic culinary Mecca’s such as France and Italy retain a strong allure, we find that an increasing number of our travellers are looking for something more exotic and off-the-beaten-path, and thus places like India, Indochina and Morocco are generating a lot of interest.”

“From a culinary trend point of view,” says Jennifer Deacon, Horizon’s Senior Exploratory Trip Planner, ” in addition to the overarching shift to bite-size portions, chef’s tables and tasting menus, we’re seeing increased interest in ethnic foods (Asian, Latin, etc), premium products (upscale water, exotic mushrooms, etc), healthy eating (organic, grass-fed and free-range, etc), flavourful foods (fresh herbs, salt, etc) and the local-foods movement (100-mile diets, farmer markets, etc). From our perspective, the travel equivalent of eating at a chef’s table is going to the local market in Saigon with our celebrity chef and then returning to her home for an intimate hands-on private cooking lesson and leisurely lunch in her kitchen.”

Whether it is travelling along the gourmet trial through rural Hungary in pursuit of the pungent pleasures of paprika in the company of renowned author Joanne Sasvari (Paprika: a Spicy Memoir from Hungary), shucking oysters on the pier with a weathered Cancalle fisherman in Normandy, or eating the perfect tajine by candlelight beside a pool dappled with rose petals deep in the heart of Morocco, an epicurean adventure with luxury outfitters Horizon & Co is sure to broaden your palate and enrich your repertoire of cocktail party stories. www.horizon-co.com

For more on Food and Wine at ITKT