Urban food tours, mushroom foraging and oyster shucking, you can taste the place with a top NSW gourmet experience. Rediscover natural foods, forage in the forest and taste bush-tucker in Central NSW with new food and wine trails, events and farm tours in the best foodie towns in NSW.

Here are the ways to eat your way around with a top NSW gourmet experience. They have all gone straight to the top of my must-do list, and I think they will find a place on yours too!

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Gourmet experience NSW wild mushroom picking The Kyah

Top Gourmet Experiences in NSW

Central NSW is perfect for a foodie road trip, located two hours drive from Sydney it includes Oberon, Bathurst, Orange, Blayney, Lachlan, Cowra, Canowindra, Grenfell, Parkes and Forbes and with many of the top new food experiences in NSW to discover.

Autumn Wild Mushroom Trail

Wild mushrooms are only available for a short window of time each year, so pop on your wellies, feel the earth between your fingers and be one of the select few to enjoy this rare forage and feast experience.
Kyah Boutique Hotel in Blackheath, Blue Mountains, hosts their first Autumn Wild Mushroom Trail collection of play and stay events in April. It’s a morning of wild mushroom hunting, lunch in the woods followed by a three-course foraged mushroom dinner at Kyah’s onsite restaurant, Blaq. The package includes a night’s stay at Kyah.
Hosted by mushroom farmer Mate Herceg, who also happens to be Kyah’s General Manager and Executive Chef, you will be foraging and feasting pine and slippery jack mushrooms in the prime of the season. Tours will be held on Saturday 9, 23 and 30 April, from 8 am.
More details: The Kyah Boutique Hotel 

Orange Food Week

Orange Food Week Hero Young Gun Chefs (L-R) Chris Tudor, Dom Aboud, Ruben Lopez, Lily Hahn-Stevens, Richard Learmon. Photo TravMedia

Small Private Farm Tours in Orange

For an epicurean adventure in Orange, new Country Food Trails offers small private tours to farms, breweries, and wineries with a focus on Indigenous bush-tucker and history. There is private driving or walking tours including the three-hour ‘Tasting Trail’, the ‘Ale Trail’ or the ‘Farm Trail’. Local Orange host Nicole Farrell shares her passion, knowledge and goes off the beaten path in this world-renowned foodie hotspot.

Orange Wild Weekend

A top new gourmet experience in NSW is the Orange Wild Weekend. Photo: TravMedia

A wild weekend in Orange

The Orange Wild Weekend is held over three days in autumn and features bush-walks, producers, foragers, conservationists and chefs inspired by local Mount Canobolas’ natural food and animals.

In Canowindra the ethical Bush Goddess Pennie Scott from The Cook and the Wino is offering ‘The Bush Goddess Platter’ a grazing plate at the beautiful Rosnay Organic Cellar Door with Rosnay olives, figs, stone fruit, edible flowers and local seasonal goodies curated by Pennie and matched with local wines.

top food experiences in NSW

Cowra’s Pennie Scott, the Bush Goddess at Rosnay Organic Wines, a top new food experience in NSW. Photo TravMedia

Tour a Lamb Farm

Outside Parkes join Outback Lamb‘s new Farm Tour for a pure slice of Australiana, an educational three-hour tour of beautiful ‘Westpoint’, a 5000-hectare family-run farm. Learn about Fiona and Bill’s sustainable farming philosophy as they now supply lamb to boutique butchers in Sydney, see seasonal activities in action, and enjoy a homegrown Outback Lamb for lunch.

Visit Bathurst’s Wineries

One of Bathurst‘s best-kept secrets is the quality of its family-run cool-climate wineries. Newly opened is Rock Forest Vineyard which has a deep Indigenous connection, a massive flat rock surface below the cellar door collects water as it did for thousands of years by the Wiradjuri. Renzaglia Wines has a newly refurbished cellar door and also try Vale Creek, Bellbrook Friends Wines and Winburndale Wines.

Carcoar’s Award Winning Italian Restaurant

In Blayney’s historic village of Carcoar, Antica Australis, a new Italian restaurant, won a Chef’s Hat in the 2021 Good Food Guide Awards. ‘Bringing a little of the soul of rural Italy to the heart of regional Australia.’

Do it yourself vegetarian, vegan and raw food trail

This bespoke, do-it-yourself edible adventure at Shoalhaven Visitor’s Centre is a food trail filled with healthy eateries for tourists to try. Start the food trail with a fresh Buddha bowl, a meat-free bliss burger or raw vegan sweets as you journey the stunning South Coast. In Berry’s Back 2 Earth Farm Stay, have a plant-based meal or try a bespoke retreat package with options of wellness, massage and a raw food workshop.  At Greendale’s in the town Pyree, have a vegetarian brekkie board with eggs and asparagus, or head to Craft Surf in Ulladulla for a 100 per cent raw, vegan treat. It’s a culinary tour that is also good for you!

Say hello to the Riverina’s best artisan food producers

Food I Am hosts food tours that visit some of the Riverina’s best artisan food producers. An experienced foodie host will take you on a food trail to meet the people behind the agriculture, including boutique producers, artisans and farmers dedicated to organic, sustainable, free-range farming.

Mushroom foraging in the forest at Oberon

Pack an empty basket and head to Oberon’s Field to Forest Festival. A month of foodie events includes wild mushroom foraging tours with Detour Adventures, forage training workshops and edible adventures with Diego Bonetto, and Wine Beer and Gin Open Trails through the picturesque countryside. Join a 4WD Fish and Forage tour for trout in the Duckmaloi River, shop at the Oberon and Tarana Markets, and enjoy open days at Mayfield Garden and Gairloch Garden.

Mushroom gathering is a top NSW gourmet experience.

Eat oysters on the Sapphire Coast

The coastline from Shoalhaven South to Eden is known as the Oyster Coast and offers many opportunities for oyster shucking and a seafood culinary tour. Head south to the Narooma Oyster Festival, a massive celebration of the delicacy, where you can enjoy Angasi, Pacific and Sydney Rock Oysters. At Jim Wilds Oyster Service, Greenwell Point Rock Oysters and Pacific Oysters are shucked while you wait.

In Tathra, award-winning Sydney Rock Oysters are grown in the pristine conditions of Nelson Lake by the family-owned Tathra Oysters Company. Sample their famous oysters locally at Tathra Beach Café or in iconic Sydney restaurants Otto, Neil Perry’s Rockpool and Cafe Sydney.

For a memorable day out, join Captain Sponges Magical Oyster Tour on Pambula Lake, and learn all about oyster farming.

Southern Highlands wild food adventure

Learn to gather wild food safely with Wild Food Adventures, a privately-owned tour operator specialising in bespoke day trips, seasonal foraging workshops and outdoor feasts in the Southern Highlands region. You’ll visit authentic working farms, taste delicious cheeses and fruits matched with local wines and eat delicious meals crafted from local produce. Try the Fungi Forage Vine Tour with a mushroom foraging expert, or the popular Winter Truffle Hunts and explore the stunning Southern Highlands landscape.

Sydney’s urban foraging and wild food dining

There are more top new food experiences in NSW to be found in Sydney, where you can go urban foraging for edible weeds, collect pure honey and sample plant-based dining.

Source your own honey by learning beekeeping on a course with The Urban Beehive, which teaches the principles of backyard and rooftop beekeeping, how to light smokers, open beehives, handle bees and identify eggs, larvae, pollen and honey.

In Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden, immerse yourself in the rich Indigenous culture of the traditional owners of the Sydney city area and learn about the way plants in the garden were used by Aboriginal people and taste seasonal bush tucker foods, in the Aboriginal Bush Food Experience.

Discover the nutritional and medicinal remedies locked inside common weeds growing in your garden, and in parks and reserves on a three-hour walking Wonderful Wild Weeds – Foraging Tour at Centennial Parklands.

In the hip dining precinct of Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf, you can savour a unique plant-based high tea at Alibi Bar, Ovolo Hotel. Designed by plant-based dining pioneer and US chef, Matthew Kenney, the high tea offers sweet and savoury including Black Sesame Cream with Raspberry Rose.

Pocket City Farms grows organic produce in the heart of Sydney’s inner west. They have lots of exciting tours and workshops to take part in from crop swaps to bush tucker workshops. Dine in at the on-site restaurant Acre, which crafts delicious meals from the kitchen garden.

For wild food dining in the city, try Paperbark Restaurant, where native Australian ingredients sourced from small-scale producers are a focus, or for a fresh take on pub food, try Green Lion at Rozelle, which has lots of veggie options such as the green Mack burger with beefless patties.

More gourmet experiences