• Hand holding a fresh porcini mushroom outdoors
  • Close-up of a wood hedgehog mushroom showing the spines on its underside.
  • Fresh chanterelle mushroom held in hand showing golden false gills
  • Bright orange chicken of the woods mushroom growing on a tree trunk, freshly foraged with a knife






  • Mike Waddington, founder of The Wander Plate food blog, foraging chanterelle mushrooms in the forest

Hi ! I’m Mike Waddington.

Welcome, and thanks for visiting my website.

I come originally from the UK where I trained as a chef and worked in fine dining. In a dramatic change of lifestyle, I moved to South East Asia and spent the next decade working as a scuba instructor. Now I find myself in landlocked Austria, and while exploring the country’s vast forests and mountain ranges, I discovered a whole new hobby: foraging.

After picking and eating my first foraged mushroom, I was hooked and quickly realised how much fun there is in finding your own food.

Upon diving into the topic, I quickly learnt how many amazing and unique ingredients are out there, but they are almost never found in the supermarket.



Once of the things about foraging that attracts me the most is the sustainability aspect of it. I love the idea of one day having a house somewhere in the remote countryside and producing almost all of my own food.

So naturally outside of foraging, I am also really interested in locally sourced seasonal produce, and especially the lesser known ingredients that you’ll rarely find at a local market, let alone a supermarket.

  • Hiker standing on a forest trail surrounded by tall evergreens and sunlight filtering through the trees.






  • Sunlit evergreen forest in Rauris, Austria, with trees reflected in a calm pond below.
  • High-altitude landscape of the Glockner mountains featuring rugged rocky slopes, melting snowfields, and a wide blue sky with scattered clouds.
  • Mountain landscape with grassy plateau and forested hills under a clear blue sky.
  • View over the Austrian mountains with misty layered peaks, rocky cliffs, and sunlight streaming across the sky.






  • Hiker standing in front of a large natural rock arch in a snowy Icelandic landscape.


Outside of cooking and foraging, most of my hobbies are rooted in nature. I love hiking — whether it’s high in the mountains or along a rugged coastal path — and I travel whenever I can to experience the landscapes, wildlife, and environments of other countries. My ideal holiday is always spent camping rather than staying in a fancy apartment.

And then there’s my absolute favourite sport: scuba diving. I learnt to dive in 2009 and have since logged more than 2,500 dives across four continents. Diving also introduced me to another passion: photography. I started with underwater photography, but quickly expanded into wildlife and landscapes. You’ll see many of these images throughout this site — I hope you enjoy them.