Onboard True North: A Culinary Journey That’s Changing the Meaning of Food Travel

Forget what you think you know about cruising. There’s no buffet line here. No salad bar or themed nights. On True North’s Southern Safari, the only predictable thing about the food is that it’ll be world-class, ultra-fresh, and swimming that morning. This isn’t just a boat trip with good food—this is a floating, fishing, foraging, fire-cooking expedition for people who book restaurants before hotels.

At the heart of this flavour-led odyssey is True North’s head chef—Hannah Jukes, a Margaret River-based culinary gun who moonlights as a wedding cake maker when she’s not plating freshly speared coral trout. “If you’re a foodie…Southern Safari is all about food, wine, and fresh seafood,” she says. “It’s incredible.”

The Southern Safari itinerary drifts from Adelaide through South Australia’s rugged coastline, hitting Kangaroo Island, Coffin Bay and Port Lincoln all the way to Ceduna. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure kind of experience: one guest might be cage diving with great whites, another might be catching blue swimmer crabs, while someone else is sipping WA white on the bow—all at the same time. That flexibility is deliberate.

And the food follows suit. The day’s catch dictates the menu. “We might be planning on an Amelia Park lamb rack,” Hannah says, “but if we’ve had an epic day on the water, and there’s tuna or mackerel coming in, the lamb gets bumped. You don’t say no to that kind of seafood.”

There’s a constant dance between the deck crew and the galley. Four or five tenders are out at once, fishing and radioing back to the chefs with updates. “It’s not an order form, but the boys and girls on deck know what we’re chasing,” Hannah says. “Sometimes I’ll say, ‘Don’t bring back anything unless it’s coral trout’—and sure enough, they get one.”

Once it’s back on board, the seafood is prepped, portioned and either cooked for dinner or kept whole to be grilled beachside over coals. Some days, it’s sashimi tuna, other days, it’s golden snapper roasted whole in a pit. And guests on board are all a part of the process, which makes eating it that much sweeter.

One highlight that keeps returning to the menu is the congee. Traditionally a Chinese breakfast, Hannah’s version is supercharged with WA fish stock and aromatics like lemongrass, kaffir lime, ginger and chili, then served with an array of garnishes: crispy shallots, sambal, peanuts, lime, sesame oil. “We all have our own ratios when we build a bowl,” she laughs. “It’s the dish the whole crew looks forward to. It warms your soul after an early morning fishing expedition.”

The drinks hold their own too. True North just inked a new partnership with Plantagenet Wines, meaning their house pours now come direct from WA’s Great Southern. “All our house wines are from Plantagenet, and included in the cruise,” Hannah says. “They’re beautiful wines, and it’s great that they’re local. It just makes sense with everything else we’re doing.”

The cruise is tight-knit—22 crew to 36 guests on the big boat, 16 to 20 on the smaller True North II—which means every experience is deeply personalised. You might find yourself sitting next to the deckhand who helped you catch a tuna earlier that day or having a beer on the back deck with the chef who cooked your fish.

Off the boat, things don’t slow down. There’s live-fire seafood feasting at Yarnbala Station with didgeridoo music as the soundtrack. There’s the day-one Barossa detour—a cooking class and lunch at Maggie Beer’s farm, followed by a tour and premium tasting at the iconic Australian winery Penfolds—before guests even board the boat in Adelaide. And there’s the genuine feeling that this isn’t a cruise at all—it’s a roving, rugged, chef-led restaurant at sea.

There’s no casino. No pool deck. You’re not paying for entertainment—you are the entertainment. You’re catching lunch, learning the tides and then eating your own catch as the sun goes down. It’s simply an immersive hunter-gatherer experience like no other.

The motto is life’s different after, and it’s earned. With more than 14,000 repeat guests—including hundreds who’ve done four or more trips—it’s clearly leaving a mark on guests. And once you’ve had a bowl of their famous fish congee at 10am on a remote coastline—or fresh sashimi sliced from a tuna you caught an hour earlier—you start to understand why.