Salt & Wind Travel is a boutique travel company for the discerning food and lifestyle traveler founded in 2015.

We’re here to help you taste the world!

Salt & Wind Travel is a boutique travel company for the discerning food and lifestyle traveler. We help our clients dig into their travels in a variety of ways: including arranging private day tours, crafting custom itinerary planning, hosting small group trips, our Digital City Guides For Food Lovers, and via this online magazine.

Salt & Wind is not for the one-city-a-day, selfie stick-wielding tourist. Our services are for the traveler who wants to understand what makes a destination special. For the explorer who wants to experience classic gems worth their weight as well as just-opened hotspots to discover what the culture of a destination 100% unique.

Founded by food and travel expert, Aida Mollenkamp in 2015, the company is owned by Aida and filmmaker and travel expert, Kristen Kellogg.

Our deep expertise in a few locations — California, Mexico, Italy, France, and Spain — means our recommendations are quality. Each destination is meticulously researched, each travel partner handpicked, and each activity personally planned, to show you the people, tastes, and sights that make these regions deliciously unique.

You deserve to make the most of your vacation — our travel services do the work for you so you can focus on being in the moment. Be it custom food tours, exclusive restaurants reservations, hands-on cooking classes, or private wine tastings – if it’s related to food, we’re here to help you make it happen. To get started, check out our full list of travel planning services or fill out this quick form to have us plan your trip!

Salt & Wind Travel Founders

Aida Mollenkamp, Founder and Editor-In-Chief

Aida is a food and travel expert, author, chef, Food Network personality, founder of the travel services company, Salt & Wind Travel, and partner at the creative agency and educational platform, Border Free Media. She has made her career in food travel media and hospitality and has crisscrossed the globe to search out the best food destinations.

After graduating from the Cornell Hotel School and Le Cordon Bleu Paris, she joined CHOW Magazine where she ran the test kitchen and worked as Food Editor. Aida then moved to television, hosting the Food Network show, Ask Aida,FoodCrafters on the Cooking Channel, In The Pantry on Yahoo!, and the TasteMade series, Off Menu. Her cookbook, Keys To The Kitchen, is a go-to for home cooks who want to become more adventurous cooks and the Travel Guides For Food Lovers series she has co-authored are beloved among food travelers.

Through Border Free Media, Aida shares the lessons she’s learned as an entrepreneur with other creative businesses. With her work at Salt & Wind Travel, Aida aims to help discerning travelers taste the world. A native Californian, Aida is driven by places with that same creative spirit of the Golden State. She speaks four languages and has lived across the United States as well as in France and Italy.

For more on Aida, visit aidamollenkamp.com or find her on social at Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest

Find Aida on social at Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest

Kristen Kellogg, Partner and Creative Director

Kristen is the founder and creative director of Border Free Media, a creative agency and education platform, and a partner at Salt & Wind Travel.

As a filmmaker, digital storyteller, and travel expert Kristen has spent the last decade bridging the gap between big agency and influencer. She has built meaningful connections through creative content for her clients around the globe. Kristen is known for her work both behind the camera and on camera with recent clients including Hotel Tonight, Rosetta Stone and Peru Tourism.

At Border Free Media, Kristen prides herself on passing on what she has learned through education for other creative business owners and entrepreneurs. Prior to her creative endeavors in marketing, Kristen worked in food and beverage and hospitality operations. Through Salt & Wind Travel, Kristen helps travelers dig deeper in their travels. The Travel Guides For Food Lovers series she co-authored is a must among food travelers.

When she’s not on the road, Kristen finds inspiration by exploring the tastes and sights of her own backyard in Mexico City. Find Kristen on instagram @KristenKellogg.

Find Kristen on social at Instagram

Salt & Wind Travel Staff

Jackie Bryant, Editor-At-Large & Trips Coordinator

Jackie is a food and travel writer who can often be found in some phase of entering or exiting Mexico. After leaving her native New York and escaping her former career in finance, she relocated to San Diego. Her work can be found at publications like Roads & Kingdoms, New Worlder, AFAR, Eater, Thrillist and The Infatuation, among others. In addition to contributing to Salt & Wind, she’s also using her Mexico and Spain expertise to help design and execute Salt & Wind’s trips.

Anapaula Paez, Marketing Intern

Originally from Monterrey, Mexico, Anapaula is currently studying Hospitality Business Administration at Les Roches. Connecting with people and moving around the globe moves her, as she has studied and lived in four countries — Mexico, Spain, USA and Switzerland. In the past, she has worked in restaurant operations at Kimori Restaurant Group and at Soho House. As a Marketing intern for Salt & Wind Travel, Anapaula helps with social media management, newsletter tactics and overall marketing strategies with the aim of further developing the Salt & Wind Travel brand.

Regular Contributors

Nicole Collins, Beauty Contributor

Nicole loves to travel, cook and dine well nearly as much as she loves beauty. She has 10 years of marketing and brand partnership experience in the beauty industry working with indie and luxury brands and everything in between.

Ligaya Malones, Hawaii, Spain, Mexico, and California Contributor

Ligaya Malones writes about bright spots in food and travel from San Diego and abroad. Ligaya writes travel tips and various food stories about Hawaii, Spain, and California for Salt & Wind.

Rachel Vermiglio Smith, Italy Contributor

Rachel is an Arizona-born, wanderer at heart who eventually settled down to live the pasta-eating dream in Florence, Italy. Since 2014, she has been working as an Italian culture decoder, writing articles and consulting on all things Italian. When not exploring new restaurants or geeking out over art history, she can be found strolling the Arno river with her bilingual California rescue dog, Stella.

Salt & Wind Philosophy

If we’re going to be hanging out, we think there are a few things you should know. Here at Salt & Wind we follow this mantra no matter whether we’re at home or on the road:

• We like to spend time in the unique neighborhoods that make a place special
• We think local, even when we’re traveling the globe so we do our best to highlight independent makers
• We believe in seasonal eating and cooking whole foods so, sorry, but no deep-fried candy bars here
• When we’re home, we love cooking recipes inspired by our favorite food destinations
• We like to stay active so we’re always looking where to workout or walk when we’re on the road
• We believe cocktail hour, boutique shopping, and quality coffee are our god-given rights

Contribute To Salt & Wind Magazine

The online magazine, Salt & Wind, is built for and by a community of food and travel lovers. We’re always ISO amazing photographers, writers, and recipe developers. To pitch us, please review our Editorial Guidelines then reach out to us at edit [at] saltandwind [dot] com.

Work With Salt & Wind Travel

From sponsored content to creative collaborationes and IRL events, through our in-house content creation agency, Border Free Media, we work with brands in a variety of capacities. For our Media Kit or to discuss further, reach out to us at partnerships[at] saltandwind [dot] com.

Press & Media

The Salt & Wind team has been featured on a variety of media outlets from television to magazines to online destinations. If you want to learn more, email us at travel@saltandwind.com

Disclosure

The information presented on Salt & Wind Travel is for general information purposes only. While we attempt to keep information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to any of the information, products, or services contained on the website for any purpose.

Photo by Christine Davis