Spa cuisine appearates regular restaurant menus

Tag : carrot seed oil


You no longer have to step into a health club to have spa cuisine. Five-star hotels and high-end restaurants are now offering low-calorie food and drinks that were earlier found on health club menus. The all-day diner The Living Room at Westin Sohna, for instance, offers an eclectic spread of spa breakfast menu and all-day munchies while The Trident Hilton in Gurgaon is planning to host a spa food festival.

Other hotels, too, are encouraging chefs to rustle up gourmet meals with recipes tailored for the calorie-conscious clientele. And the fare isn’t frugal bean sprouts and boiled vegetables. The spa menu at Harriez, a mutlicuisine restaurant at Fitplaza Spa, offers blackened Cajun fish and mustard marinated roasted lamb as the main course. And ends this with jasmine-flavoured chocolate pots and carrot cake for dessert. While the spa at Fitplaza offers exotic messages and even has a Turkish hamam, the menu makes an equally impressive effort rejuvenate your mind and body.

Divattra, the spa restaurant at The Ashok, stirs up a mean meal. Skim through the menu and it lays out a feast with dishes such as eggplant caviar served with flat bread, organic turkey with gruyere cheese, smoked salmon crepes and even watermelon caprioska. You can even sample freshly baked pizzas. The base, of course, would be thin-crust and olive oil will replace the cheese in order to cut down on the calorie.

Does this lavish spread actually fit into the spa cuisine definition? Absolutely, say chefs. So, how does spa cuisine differ from a low-cal diet? The ingredients, they say, are culled with more care. Olive oil, rock salt and natural stevia sugar which is low on glycemic index are used. The dishes are steamed, poached or grilled rather than deep-fried, with an emphasis on lean cuts. "I stick to extra virgin olive oil for European style cooking and cold compressed sesame seed oil for Asian recipes," adds says Ritu Dalmia, food consultant with Divattra. Keeping in mind the city denizens who are constantly on the move, healthy wholesome meal has more takers than overdone salads. Most restauranteurs say that customer feedback encouraged them to explore the spa cusine. At its spa cuisine promotion, The Trident Hilton is working on the Ayurveda philosophy. The food, though with red meats and curries, will be easy on the stomach. “The food will include all six tastes—sweet, sour, bitter, salty, pungent, umam—but it is important to complement different dishes with ingredients that can negate the fat and keep the flavours intact,” offers an official at the hotel.

Chutney at The Metropolitan Hotel is offering a neat three-course spread that will be within 500 calories. The vegetarian meal will be 423 calories and include a portion of Hare Matar ki Shammi, Mushroom Hara Pyaz, Palak dal, brown rice pulao and fruits for dessert. A 448-calorie non-vegetarian meal will have mahi sarson tikka for starters and murg hara dhaniya for main course. "We’ve consulted the chef at Maz Muller hospital and our in-house micro-biologists to get the right calorie count", says Rajesh Khanna, F&B head at The Metropolitan hotel.