Review: Gold Coast Food and Wine Tours

I love food. Ask any of my friends and they will tell you, I eat a lot. Thankfully I don't look like that. Amen to the universe, hoping this is never gonna change!

Ask any of my friends again, and they'll tell you that I have a good nose for stalking the best cafes and restaurants in any new place I land. So when I came back to Australia‘s sunniest part of Queensland last year, naturally I was seeking some new places to eat and drink. That's when I stumbled across Gold Coast Food and Wine Tours for the first time.

I ended up going along to their ‘Taste of Burleigh Heads' tour, which took a small group of lovely people around the boutiquey beachside town of Burleigh Heads, a total favorite of mine that I only had been to a handful of times in the past.

You can read more about the tour and all the other amazing things to do around Brisbane in my article here.

If you are interested in finding out which months are great to pay a visit to Queensland, you can find more details on when to go to Queensland calendar.

As I came back to housesit on the Gold Coast for a while, my foodie heart yearned to suss out some more places. So I got to go along to a new tour which my friend Karen from Gold Coast Food and Wine Tours just launched the ‘Gastronomy on the G’ Progressive Dinner Tour.

If you have never heard about a progressive dinner, it's basically a dinner with successive courses that are eaten at different venues with different hosts.

For this tour, you will get to visit four different venues on the Gold Coast and hop onto the G-Link (Gold Coasts tram network) to get from one place to the next to eat one course in each.

A pretty cool concept, also because you have some time to digest and get to talk to different chefs and try a great variety of food.

Starting out, we met at the Crowne Plaza in Broadbeach. Here we kicked off the afternoon at Balthazar Wine & Dining with sampling different wines from white, and rosé to red and had some fantastic tapas.

Heading on to the next location, we found ourselves at Clifford's Grill Lounge at the bottom of the Voco Hotel in Surfers Paradise where there was more wine waiting for us. Here we also got to make fresh pasta ourselves and sampled a variety of canapés.

My favourite was the pork belly and the seafood pasta that followed was absolutely perfection. And I normally don't really eat much seafood except for prawns.

Clifford's is also known for their open grill and steaks. High ceilings, exposed brick, rustic tiles and the open plan kitchen surely sets the atmosphere for it.

Moving on, we were promised a visit to a secret rooftop garden. You might know how much I love rooftops and views! That's as much as I can tell you, if you want to know about it all, you may have to join a dinner tour with Gold Coast Food and Wine Tours.

A few levels back down we found ourselves at one of the most appealing and delicious buffets on the Gold Coast.

The QT Bazaar is set up as an interactive marketplace with anything from fresh salads to Asian Woks, a variety of seafood, a dumpling station, pizzas, slow-roasted meats and not to forget about the beautifully arranged dessert station, which will definitely not let you go hungry.

Mix in some wine or one of their signature cocktails and you will possibly be very happy for the night. I know our group was!

Not that I had any space left to eat more food, the final stop was at the alluring Chapter & Verse Bar and Lounge which is located on the ground floor of the Surfers Paradise JW Marriott Resort & Spa. The open deck out the back is just amazing.

We finished off with a decadent dessert especially created just for our tour group accompanied by a matching cocktail, which was exactly what I needed at the end of all the food.

I totally loved every minute of the tour, the group was a lovely crowd of people, very fun and happy to eat and drink as you would expect.

Lastly, Karen who runs Gold Coast Food and Wine Tours definitely eases you into the tour as her passion for food and happiness for life in general is simply infectious.