Maeve O’Meara OAM

The founder and director of one Australia’s best-loved and most successful food tour businesses, Gourmet Safaris, Maeve O’Meara has always been fascinated by the food of many cultures. She has been lucky enough to follow her passion, hosting a number of highly acclaimed food series and writing many recipe and guide books as well as founding a unique food adventure company operating in Australia and around the world.

Starting her journalistic career in newspapers at the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald, Maeve later worked as a current affairs researcher, producer and reporter in television at ABC and Channel Nine before joining SBS and making her passion her day job, creating beautiful food television – 5 series of The Food Lover’s Guide to Australia with Joanna Savill, appearing in The Chef’s Line, and for 5 years Food Presenter on Better Homes and Gardens.

Maeve has written and hosted Food Safari on SBS Television, an idea created by her partner television director Toufic Charabati to explore 44 different cuisines in depth around Australia, as well as series on Italian and French cuisine and cooking with the Elements – Earth, Fire and Water. All nine series have been seen throughout Australia and in 174 countries around the world. Maeve has been honoured by the World Food Media Awards for five series of The Food Lover’s Guide To Australia, and for her work as a food presenter on Channel Seven’s Better Homes and Gardens. In 2022 Maeve was awarded an OAM for her services to multicultural food journalism.

Over the years Maeve has written best-selling books Food Safari Earth, Fire, Water; Food Safari – Glorious Adventures Across a World of Cuisines; Italian Food Safari – A Delicious Celebration of the Italian Kitchen, French Food Safari and Complete Food Safari as well as co-authoring 10 guide books to eating and shopping across the cuisines in Sydney and Melbourne and a recipe book Lamingtons and Lemongrass.

Since launching in 1998, Gourmet Safaris has hosted over 60,000 food-lovers in Sydney, Melbourne and around the world, winning Best Tour Operator in The Australian newspaper’s prestigious Tourism & Travel Awards. Gourmet Safaris hosts food-focused day tours in Sydney and Melbourne as well as adventures in the South Australia and Tasmania and internationally to Portugal and Spain, Sardinia and Corsica, the Greek Islands, Sicily and Malta and New Zealand.

Maeve is a proud ambassador for food rescue charity OzHarvest since its earliest days.

She is a mother of three and a grandmother of two and loves cooking and having family and friends gather around her big table.