As Griffith sits poised on the brink of a food tourism explosion three of the region’s local produce stakeholders have made a bold bid in an effort to push the city onto the national ‘foodie map’ at the Sydney and Melbourne ‘Good Food and Wine Shows’.
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For Limone’s Luke Piccolo the dream of turning his hometown into a must visit food and wine destination is still a ways off, but every opportunity to showcase the region’s talent gets him one step closer.
Travelling down to both expos as part of the team behind Murray Cod Australia, Mr Piccolo said he was confident the work of their stall, alongside well-known Griffith stalwarts Calabria Wines and Australia Prunes, would become part of the recipe behind the region’s eventual success.
“I think that once Griffith becomes more well known we can establish ourselves as a tourism area instead of just a food producing area,” he said.
“That is what we are all working towards – it is not something that can happen overnight, coming with that comes infrastructure needs, but it is something we can achieve here.”
An estimated 4000 samples of Murray cod were given out by Mr Piccolo and the team behind their stall – with fans over the weekend including the familiar faces from the 2017 Masterchef cast and The Living Room’s Miguel Maestre who used their fish in his paella.
“It was really cool Masterchef cooked our cod last week and they were super happy and impressed with it which was great – it was definitely a worthwhile weekend,” Mr Piccolo said.
Taking some time out to speak with the powerhouse team behind Mudgee’s two decades of marketing its region Mr Piccolo said he was hopeful more Griffith stakeholders could come together in the future.
“Mudgee actually had a whole stand set up promoting their area and wineries and it was all connected and linked,” he said commenting council had suggested they might start to budget for such an endeavour in the future.
“If we had all been in one spot it may have had more of an impact because people were saying to us ‘oh you’re from Griffith, we were just at the Calabria stall or the Australian prunes stall’ and they were constantly impressed.”
