Eating Well - Our Food Ethos
Our approach is to create menus that reflect what is typically eaten in each country we visit. Our chefs cook with fresh ingredients that are available seasonally, while supporting local suppliers. Your retreat menu will include sustainably and ethically sourced fish and meat, but we can cater for vegetarians and vegans on request.
In places like Scotland, Panama and Spain there is plenty of fresh produce grown on nearby farms, so you’ll be served wonderfully abundant meals with plenty of variations. In places like Mongolia and Iceland where they have restricted growing seasons, there is not such a wide variety of produce available so our chefs work their magic to create simpler but tasty menus.
Fuelling your retreat: You’ll often be doing some strenuous exercise on our retreats, so we make sure that your menus are fully balanced when it comes to micro and macro nutrients. Our retreat menus are made up of nutrient dense foods that are gentle on the digestion and we will fill you up with nourishing and flavoursome food that gives you energy and makes you happy.
Our chefs: Our own chefs create the menus for our UK retreats and some European retreats but we mostly work with brilliant local chefs who create delicious retreat menus. These are people with many years professional experience who know how to feed you and feed you well!
Food sources: We source our ingredients from local producers whenever we can. We avoid using supermarkets and we use imported goods only when we have to. Our chefs take the time to research local suppliers to be sure they can access the best quality produce for their dishes.
Food waste and kitchen recycling: We aim to create zero food waste so our menus are designed so that left overs can be safely re-used in other meals. We purchase fresh produce that is free from packaging whenever we can. In countries where this is not the norm, we ask chefs to research suppliers ahead of the retreat. We prefer kitchens that have excellent recycling options.
Caffeine on retreat: We encourage you to keep your caffeine consumption minimal during your retreat but for those who don’t want to exclude caffeine we have coffee with breakfast and English breakfast tea available during the day.
Alcohol on retreat: With our many years experience in leading retreats, we find having no alcohol really supports the retreat process. For this reason we don’t serve alcohol on our retreats and we request that you do not bring alcohol with you. On some retreats, an occasional glass of something is fine when you have a day off from your practice.
If having a daily glass of wine with your evening meal is important to you, these may not be the right retreats for you!
Special diets: We are only able to cater for food allergies and dietary requests if they have been pre-agreed when you book. We will always do our best to accommodate your request but as we have set menus and we work with different chefs all over the world, alterations are not always possible.
In some locations they are unable to cater for specialists diets at all (in Japan we cannot offer gluten free menus for example) so it is important that you check before you book if you have food allergies. Here is a link to email us about this. Thanks for understanding.