If you are a gastronomer, a gastronomic journalist, a chef, a writer, a sommelier, a winemaker or wine seller, or anything in between, you’ll be familiar with the food and wine fatigue.
The more you eat out, and the more you are subject to the whims of Chefs who liberally use salt, and fats, and have no whatsoever notion about nutrients and calories, all bowing to The Flavour.
Hedonism, in the long run, is tiring.
For those whose life doesn’t revolve around wine and food, this may be astonishing but we do get tired of wine and food.
Especially in hospitality.
But also, we know that hedonism can be deadly: we all see the “old wine guys”, the ones that spend their lives at Michelin-starred restaurants, popping expensive bottles by the dozen. They do this almost daily, and when you meet one of them in real life they literally smell of impending death.
Yellowing eyes, flaky skin: dehydrated, their cells weakening and ageing at every sip, at every bite to a Wellington, they race towards death and decay.
This is hidden, of course, by Instagram filters and you do not notice it behind the infamous walls of bottles, cheerful posts about expensive dinners, and all that.
But this disrespect for their own bodies is not of every gourmet and gastronomer. Not everyone wants to die à la Caréme.
So at least four times a year, when the season turns and around the solstices and equinoxes, I take some time to rest.
I tone down my eating, I retreat back home (or someplace akin) and zero my drinking for some reset.
As I’m not an ascetic, self-hating being, I do bring a luxe, calm and volupté into my life even when I’m “detoxing” (I find this word ridiculous, but it gives the idea of my reset).
With this new chapter in the newsletter, I want to explore the crossing between health and (fine) dining, as a new frontier of gastronomy and cuisine that is, quite literally, cooking in some of the most expensive, exclusive, and secret medical wellness spa and their restaurants.