Foodies are fast becoming the best friend of wellness resorts: These highly inquisitive, knowledgeable epicureans want to visit spas without sacrificing taste, presentation or sustainability, and they are challenging chefs to create Instagrammable food that is sexy to the eye, delicious on the tastebuds and good for the body.
As well, the current focus on the impact of F&B consumption on the environment is fueling new ideas in wellness cuisine, and chefs are rising to the occasion.
“In recent years, studies, documentaries, articles and social media have brought attention to both the damage caused by the food industry and the health benefits of eating well. This buzz has also increased the public’s awareness of the wellness sector, helping to validate the importance of mindful eating,” says Pete Ghione, executive chef/F&B director of Canyon Ranch Las Vegas; Fort Worth, Texas-based Canyon Ranch has properties in Tucson, Arizona, and Lenox, Massachusetts.
He adds: “I give a lot of credit to chefs whose diligent work has helped to overcome the stereotype that eating healthy is the equivalent to eating medicine. On today’s menus, we see chefs, including myself, embrace superfoods and use many creative techniques to maximize flavors combined with artful presentations to produce dishes that are appetizing to the eyes, tastebuds and the body. It’s those dishes that our guests are excited to show off to their friends.”
Even at spas, foodies will never be less obsessed with taste or presentation. “If that were the case, you would see spa cuisine on an episode of ‘Fear Factor,’” Ghione jibes.
If anything, they are more obsessed. “The array of philosophies and topics around healthy eating makes them fussier,” points out Phoebe Boonkerd, wellness and business development director of Amatara, a wellness resort in Phuket, Thailand.
Eve Persak, nutrition adviser of Singapore-based luxury operator Como Hotels & Resorts, says it’s not just foodies who are becoming wellness buffs — spa aficionados are becoming foodies. “Nutrition information has never been more abundant, options for healthy eating have never been so diverse and the public has never been more interested,” she says.
Sustainability focus
“Foodies are becoming far more ‘fact’-conscious. They want to know the background behind each dish, what each ingredient is, how they are prepared and what the health benefits are,” observes Alison Stone, group director of wellness at Aman. “They ask questions and expect good solid answers, and in true foodie style will also always ask for recipes of their favorite dishes.”
Their interest goes far beyond the plate.
“Our guests question what we do with our leftovers and ‘over-demand,’” says Paisarn Cheewinsiriwat, executive chef of 5-star wellness resort Chiva-Som in Hua Hin, Thailand. “We tell them we utilize everything. We have organic gardens and compost our leftovers or feed them to worms in our worm farm to be turned into fertilizer for the soil. People even want to know where the fish or chicken is from, how much it costs, is it local or seasonal.”
Como’s Persak marvels at the change. “For decades, we’ve quietly invited our guests — foodie or otherwise — to explore healthful eating. Previously, it was more of an understated suggestion. Now, as interest in wellness grows, it’s become more of an open dialogue,” she says. “I can imagine it’s quite exciting to consider an entirely new realm to their area of interest — beyond the culinary (what happens on the plate), the gustatory (what happens on the palate) and into the nutritional (what happens after we swallow).”
Heading to the kitchen
Foodies also want to learn. At Miraval, now a resorts brand under Hyatt Hotels Corp. that helps guests “live in balance and be at their best,” foodies want to be immersed in the entire culinary process, from learning how to grow their own food to preparing a dish in the kitchen, says Vice President of Programming Carl Pratt. Miraval, which offers gluten-free baking courses, farm tours and beekeeping immersions, just launched a Conscious Cooking Curriculum to tap into guest concerns on food waste. Comprising two cooking classes and one lecture, the program dishes out practical tips for reducing waste in guests’ own kitchens.
“With these classes, we want to go beyond farm to table and create an awareness surrounding the food we eat, the environmental impact of how we consume and prepare food, and the effects pesticides and GMOs can have on our health. Our goal is to raise the level of awareness and offer a perspective that engages our guest on both an intellectual and emotional level,” Pratt says.
At Como Shambhala in Bali, Como’s wellness brand, chefs engage with guests, honoring special requests and answering queries personally.
“We frequently offer cooking demonstrations and classes — so that our guests can observe how we prepare our selections, receive hands-on instructions and learn the nutritional intention behind the recipes we develop. We’ve developed experiences wherein our guests can visit the locations and communities with whom we partner to source our ingredients like our coffees, rice, fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices,” Persak says.
Educating the educators
Where do chefs get their inspiration to create wellness menus and offerings? Aman’s Stone says the group brings in renowned wellness chefs to educate its chefs to innovate. Internal tastings gather feedback to ensure that only the best-tasting and most nutritional dishes go on the menu.
“At Amanpuri, our first Aman property, for example, we offer individual wellness immersions tailored entirely to the guests’ health objectives. Here, our wellness menu changes daily, with six creations either featuring vegan (plant-based), raw vegan, light proteins and eggs,” Stone says. The menus also include juices, tonics and digestives that can support guests in their quest to detox, cleanse or boost their immunity, among other goals.
Bangkok-based Six Senses Hotels Resorts and Spas works with experts to develop nutritional guidelines based on cutting-edge research on food and health, blended with traditional and cultural knowledge. Its Eat With Six Senses program is developed with a physician, and Six Senses’ chefs are given specific guidelines which often result in them having to find innovative ways to stay true with that philosophy. That’s no exception even at the chain’s first city hotel, Six Senses Singapore, which has a modern Chinese restaurant and bar, Yellow Pot.
“Our Chinese chef, Sebastian Goh, had to relearn a lot of the traditional Chinese cooking methods he was used to, in order to avoid the unhealthy additives that are commonly found in Chinese cuisine,” General Manager Murray Aitken says.
According to Goh, the menu went through several rounds of revisions. “As Chinese cuisine is known to be heavily laden with MSG, we had to create all our sauces, stocks and paste from scratch to work around traditional Chinese cooking methods.” The menu also includes gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan and other options.
Chefs encounter other challenges: Ayurveda at Giardino, newly offered by the Giardino Group, which operates luxury resorts in Switzerland, means the executive chef not only has to cook up delicious food but must be an alchemist in the use of Asian spices and herbs. Employees must be well-trained and briefed, says the group’s Ayurveda specialist, Stephanie Albert.
But perhaps the biggest challenge is ensuring that concepts remain relevant and exciting. As Aman’s Stone says: “Wellness cuisine is curated with a very strong and exact science of nutrition, which it needs to stay true to in order to be authentic — whereas foodies enjoy the excitement of fusions. Due to the complexity of creating dishes that are raw food-based (often taking 24 to 48 hours to prepare before serving) and staying true to the nutritional and calorific value of the food, the challenge comes with continuously energizing new recipes that diligently keep this focus. And as ever the continued challenge is offering a varied and diverse diet, yet maintaining the nutritional benefits and delicious flavors.”
Kitchen costs
The chefs and nutritionists interviewed do not believe that wellness cuisine is necessarily costlier. Canyon Ranch’s Ghione says: “If you were to compare the startup cost of one of my kitchens that focuses on healthy food versus a conventional menu-based kitchen, well, we are probably a bit cheaper, actually. Our grills, oven and stoves are the same as any other. However, we do not need to invest in large, expensive freezers or shoulder the heavy expense of fryers, which includes thousands of gallons of fryer oil per year, fryer filter machines and waste oil management.”
Miraval’s Pratt points to other ways to keep costs under control.
“In our kitchens we prioritize organic produce with the least pesticide exposure, locally grown and in-season ingredients which are often less expensive options. We will also take ‘ugly’ produce that grocery stores don’t want” – imperfect-looking fruits and vegetables that would normally be thrown away but are perfectly good to eat. “Each of these decisions help us keep costs in check as well as offering our guests a different way of thinking about this commitment,” he says.
The rewards are worth it, say practitioners, who believe the biggest risk about wellness cuisine is only to ignore it.
Says Canyon Ranch’s Ghione: “I have personally taken many risks in my 24-year-long career as a chef. I’ve left high-paying, stable jobs to venture on my own into the health and wellness sector. By taking those risks and a personal interest in people’s lives, I have found there is absolutely no better reward than seeing someone beat the odds of losing their life to a dreadful disease — all because I took the time to cook like their life depended on it.”