Luxury travel has quietly split in two. At one end, hotels where guests barely lift a finger; at the other, properties where you might haul mussels off South African rocks, pull squid from the Tyrrhenian Sea, or — yes — stalk, shoot and butcher an elk at a five-star lodge. Welcome to the next phase of farm-to-table: hospitality has gone properly wild.
The examples are spreading fast. Casa Angelina on Italy's Amalfi Coast runs a 'totani ritual' where guests fish for squid from a wooden boat built by a local fisherman, then clean, cook and eat their catch as totani e patate. Vermejo, Ted Turner's 558,000-acre New Mexico reserve, pairs elk hunting and cutthroat trout fishing with spa treatments, bison safaris and a chef who'll teach you to fillet what you brought back — plus a conservationist explaining hunting's role in biodiversity. In Sussex, England, Nick Weston's Hunt Gather Cook has run butchery courses and live-fire feasts from London day-trippers since 2011; his only sticking point? Guests balking at removing a rabbit's head with a machete.
Why pay to milk a cow on holiday when a bowl of yoghurt and granola costs $26? Anthropologist Clare Sammells of Bucknell University points to travel's licence to experiment: freed from routines, people try things they'd never consider at home — and suddenly butchering a hog feels imaginable. Chefs see the same hunger for meaning. 'They don't simply want to taste a local dish, they want to understand where the ingredients come from,' says Casa Angelina's executive chef Leopoldo Elefante.
The movement also has deeper roots than the trend cycle suggests. For Indigenous communities, hunting, fishing and foraging have always been daily practice. Travellers can engage with that knowledge respectfully at places like Wahous Wilderness Lodge, the Ahousaht First Nation's venture in British Columbia's Clayoquot Sound, which pairs fishing trips with a tide-to-table kitchen.
Nor do you need a hotel booking. Independent guides and creators are booming: crab snaring in Half Moon Bay, spearfishing in Santa Barbara, seaweed snorkelling off Sonoma, even acorn processing via Alexis Nikole Nelson (@blackforager), whose three million followers now have her cookbook 'Happy Snacking, Don't Die!' to chew on. On Long Island's North Fork, the Lin Beach House invites guests to join a commercial fisherman's pound-trap haul, clam, pickle and blend gin — though the 4am boat departure is staff-only. Guests sleep until 10. It is, after all, a holiday.
For food-obsessed travellers bored of chef's-table theatre, this is the appeal: slow immersion in a place through its actual food system, not a curated sideshow. It suits couples, families and soloists alike — you choose your comfort level, from mushroom walks to full hunting expeditions. Expect more of it at top-end properties in 2027 and beyond.
