Ms. Kurz

Food & Beverage

Food & Beverage: Capitalizing on Your Menu

By Gabriele Kurz, Resort Wellbeing Chef , Madinat Jumeirah

Food professionals are known to be creative and innovative and have incorporated the latest food trends into their menus. Trends change similar to fashion and sometimes after a short period of time, a probably much longer lasting movement can be seen making its way into menus and contemporary food offerings of all kinds and levels: the interaction between food, nutrition and health.

Being an old and well known wisdom “you are what you eat” it is definitely quite a new challenge for the restaurant world. It represents a positive approach to optimizing nutrition not only in so called diets, but in the reality of our very own culinary world. However, it exposes chefs and food handlers to a broader understanding of what food does with our bodies, not only what it does for our palates and the Wow effect it has for the eyes. It challenges their creativity to look at their ingredients in a completely different way. It becomes increasingly more important to select ingredients carefully, to combine them wisely, to use the suitable preparation techniques. In brief they must find a way to the equilibrium of taste, presentation and health benefits.

Where in diets people have to follow strict guidelines to achieve their goals, be it long term or short term, they usually feel the restrictions in terms of lack of flavors, lack of excitement and overall lack of culinary experience as a definite loss of quality in life. I have never seen anyone who did not long for the time before his diet and a reunion with all the loved habits like eating out in restaurants, having all the favorite food again, which has been banned from the menu for a while.

What if restaurants would be able to offer food easily compatible with diets and most common food allergies, certain food requirements like gluten free, macrobiotic, vegetarian, vegan, raw food, low fat or low carbohydrate dishes? Not to mention sustainable food sources and ingredients such as organic farmed vegetables and fruits or fish which do not count to the endangered species for example? It would draw a complete different, yet sophisticated, and modern picture of sustainable menus available in delis, cafes, on buffets, and on eclectic menus of high end restaurants.

We can definitely see the culinary world changing at the moment, with imaginative chefs taking seriously into consideration what our daily food means to the human being. It means to not only to repeat and realign some salads topped with goats cheese, one pasta dish and the boring steamed vegetable platter to fulfill our duty. It means to really go into depth in nutrition knowledge and use all our creativity, high quality ingredients and preparation techniques to bring to life what customers expect today and in the future.

Knowing that fifty percent of health and wellbeing comes from the way of eating and drinking it is surprising that there has not been more items on restaurant menus that offer a great synergy of healthy life style by providing flavors with big impact in conjunction with the right balance of food and beverage. The reason could be the gap between culinary education and nutritional knowledge of food professionals. There is either a nutritionist, or a chef. Rarely one person incorporates both and can work from both angles, building the necessary bridge between the two pillars of what is absolutely essential to bring a nutritionally balanced and culinary innovative menu to life.

Such menus can attract and inspire a crowd of well educated, health conscious, smart people, happy to have ample choices of what they have been desperately looking for in menus of the old days.

Health conscious food on the menu connects people with a modern and contemporary lifestyle. It has the potential to create a new level of health, fitness, beauty, and customer loyalty.

Since the beginning of my professional life, I have strongly believed in the benefits and interconnection of our daily food and wellbeing. Similar to the fuel we put into our cars, it has an almost immediate impact on if our bodies run smoothly ort not. After I completed my apprenticeship I made the decision not to go the usual path of cooking in many different kitchens as they weren’t any in this specific health focused field, apart from sanatoriums which obviously lacked culinary experience. So I skipped visiting foreign countries while working in favour of cooking the food I can really stand behind. I joined my mother in her small Biohotel with vegetarian restaurant and cookery school in Germany, and developed a refined cooking style of healthy, vegetarian, wholesome food in a very natural way. Our creativity was appreciated and recognised by our guests, the media and many culinary colleagues. Cooking wellbeing food, using organic ingredients and catering vegetarians, vegans and raw foodists alike became more and more requested outside the health food scene inside and outside the country. My experience in the field brought me to the Middle East in 2007, taking on the role of Chef de Cuisine for Dubai’s first fine dining vegetarian restaurant in Madinat Jumeirah.

It was the first of its kind in the Middle East, where western cuisine was celebrated in a health focused way and many of the dishes became standards in the culinary offerings of the Resort, such as Beetroot Carpaccio, Butternut Squash and Feta Cheese Domino, a Raw Salad of Watermelon, Tomato, Avocado and Aloe vera with Quinoa Grissini, or a Raw Dates and Rose water Cake with Pomegranate to name a few. In the beginning, I planned my own herb garden next to the kitchen, I brought in a stone grinder to make a la minute fresh wholesome flour for our breads which was , we exchanged white sugar against honey and agave syrup, we started to buy organic ingredients and introduced items like kamut, quinoa, gruenkern (unripe spelt grains, roasted), amaranth, millet and spelt.

At Madinat Jumeirah we have now extended the culinary wellbeing experience to all our restaurants. We aim to enhance the ultimate lifestyle experience by offering a combination of gourmet, health and calorie conscious foods that complement Fitness packages, Spa treatment menus, and Holiday relaxation experiences whilst indulging the senses at the Talise Spa and Fitness facilities.

A special nutrition concept – the location for Self Discovery and the Ultimate Lifestyle Destination – integrates Spa, Wellness, Fitness, Retail and Cuisine, the cuisine offering is an extension of what has started with one fine-dining restaurant specializing in wellbeing, to the whole resort to enhance the guest experience. We started with a complete vegetarian Spa menu available at Talise Spa, featuring ovo-lacto vegetarian, vegan and raw dishes and highlighting the benefits of the main ingredients. A note below each dish gives also a brief information about calories and nutrients breakdown.

Healthy dining alternatives and nutritional cuisine that is both wholesome and nutritionally well-balanced, using well selected and to body and mind fitting ingredients are available in our restaurants, in room dining menus and banqueting facilities. In accordance with the menu change schedule of each restaurant we inject wellbeing dishes, like low fat, vegetarian, vegan, diabetic friendly and so on. Some of the restaurants are already offering the new dishes, like our award winning seafood restaurant Pierchic, featuring some truly vegetarian gems like” Beetroot and Persian Feta Feuille with baked Fuji apple” or “Stuffed Belgian Endive, truffled celeriac puree, polenta, aromatic vegetables” on their menu. The Madinat Jumeirah steakhouse, MJ’s, offers a steak-style “Coffee rubbed sweet potato, minted green pea puree, fava beans, watermelon chili relish.”

We have created a landing page on Madinat Jumeirah website, showcasing our work and offerings, like the schedule of our wellbeing cooking classes in the Resort.

We currently work on a dedicated Wellbeing Blog which is planned to go live in January 2012, where I will share many of my recipes and tips for a healthier lifestyle and insights in our work and progress towards healthier food.

Coming from a successful health and culinary inspired family business in Germany, where organic and wholesome food has been present from childhood on and has influenced and strengthened my personal and professional life I was happy to accept the role of Resort Wellbeing Chef for Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai. I see opportunities in offering healthy lifestyle and in consequence great healthy food options in hospitality.

For all of us working in this field it is definitely worth exploring. Now it is the right time for it. And it has the potential to take your menu from standard to amazing.

Enjoy the journey, stay curious, keep discovering, and you will open a treasure box of possibilities to make your guests happier than ever.

As a vegetarian herself, Chef Gabriele (Gabi) Kurz joined Madinat Jumeirah in 2007, when she took on the role of Chef de Cuisine and developed the concept for a fine-dining restaurant specialising in wellbeing. Over the years, her role has expanded and in 2011, she has been promoted to ‘Resort Wellbeing Chef’ of Madinat Jumeirah where she is developing a ‘wellbeing’ cuisine that is both wholesome and nutritionally well-balanced, using only organic and plant-based ingredients to the resort’s restaurants. Chef Kurz is involved in menu development for all the signature restaurants in the resorts including in-room dining and Conference & Incentives events, as well as being responsible for the entire menu at Talise Spa. Her cooking classes are popular with Dubai residents and in-house guests alike. Ms. Kurz can be contacted at +971 4 366 6730 or gabriele.kurz@jumeirah.com Extended Bio...

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