White Lotus Guests Only Eating at Hotel Restaurant: Is Sicily’s Food Scene Overrated?
One of my favorite mantras is, have food will travel. I’m very passionate about all things food. I have no issues hopping on a plane to go to a destination simply because they have great food. Clearly, I’m not alone in this and the fans of White Lotus are definitely with me.
In a recent interview Ben Shank, the General Manager of Four Seasons Maui at Wailea told theGuardian that after season one “the phone had been ringing nonstop since the show aired.” Season two was filmed at another Four Seasons hotel, Taormina, Sicily, at the the San Domenico Palace. This time that hotel was booked to April 2023 before the second season had even aired. Now, it’s sold out through all of 2023.
However, it doesn’t seem as if the beauty and luxury of the location is the number reason for this surge in reservations. It just might be that everyone is curious about the Scicily food.
After the weekend’s dramatic finale, the one thing that seems to be on everyone’s mind is why the guests are only eating at the hotel restaurant? People are heading to Sicily on a mission to find out.
“We are beginning to see more and more overlap between the TV/movie industry and popular holiday destinations. It really is becoming the ultimate advertisement for a location, even when the characters are not having an entirely positive experience. The audience will see something on the TV and begin to go down a rabbit hole and eventually have a significant interest in mapping out a potential vacation. That includes specifics such as where to eat. They clearly are also questioning characters decisions to the point that they want to know where they could have eaten, where they could have travelled, or what activities they could have carried out”
Austin Andersun, Lead of Hospitality at Best Value Schools
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean. Known for cannoli, artichokes, and its creative use of citrus flavors, Sicilian food is uniquely distinctive in flavor. Don’t ever make the mistake of calling it Italian.
Sicilian food benefits from the island’s rich agricultural traditions, aided by fertile volcanic soil. Tomatoes, zucchini, olives, aubergines, capers, fennel, asparagus, garlic, onions, peas, broad beans, chickpeas, peaches, oranges, mandarin, cherries, prickly pears, and an array of herbs are all grown locally. If you know anything about cooking, then you know nothing makes a dish great like fresh ingredients!
This intersectional relationship between media, food, and travel is an interesting phenomenon and one I’m sure will increase as we consume ever increasing amounts of television and film.
As many of us seek out new experiences, and even redefinitions of ourselves, it makes sense that those explorations would be linked to food. After all, food is central to our lives in intimate ways. If we see images of luxurious destinations paired with what we envision must be delicious food, why would we not want to seek those places out.
Have you added Sicily to your 2023 travel list? If so was White Lotus the reason? Are there other places on your travel list inspired by shows or movies. Tell me in the comments below or tweet me at @dgspeaks.
