Food for Thought…. and your retreat

For those not running retreats in which special diets are part of the program, the importance of the food being served on the retreat is often overlooked. In my opinion, it is one of the main factors that can make or break a retreat. Regardless of the scenic vistas of sweeping rice paddies or open ocean, how comfortable the accommodation or how intriguing your workshops, if the food isn’t good THAT is what people will remember.

So what makes for a great retreat menu? There are several components that will impact the success or failure of your retreat meals, the biggest being YOU. As the retreat leader, one of your biggest jobs is managing expectations of your retreat participants. The best way to do that when it comes to food is for you to make the decision about what kind of meals they will be eating. And for the love of God, NEVER ask your participants about their dietary requirements or food preferences. Once you’ve done that, you’ve opened a can of worms you will never be able to contain. As soon as you ask someone and they tell you they have a special request, they will then expect you to deliver on it. That would be all fine and well if you’re expecting to pay extra for that, that is if it’s even possible. If you get a beautiful retreat venue up in a remote area where the staff are all from the surrounding village, no one may even knows what gluten is, for example.

The only food related question you should be asking your participants is if they have any serious medical allergies. You are going to have to define ‘medical allergies’ for them. You will need to ask your participants about them before the retreat starts. Venues will cater to those with legitimate allergies, but not for the current trendy ‘intolerances’ (lactose notwithstanding). There’s a big difference between not being able to eat something and making a lifestyle choice to not eat something.

There is no way that any venue will be able to make a retreat menu for everyone that is vegan, gluten-free, no soy, dairy-free, sugar-free, no garlic and onions, oh and someone doesn’t like tofu…. and have it taste good or be nutritionally balanced. Very few venues will want or be able to make separate meals for each participant with their specific preferences, but any that do will charge you a lot more than their regular meal rate, and rightfully so.

If you choose the type of food, whether it be vegan, vegetarian or non-vegetarian and it’s plainly stated and your participant makes the choice to sign up knowing this, then as long as the food is good, they will be happy with whatever they get 100% of the time. If you ask them what they want (or don’t want) to eat, even if you manage to get the venue to make a meal that meets all the requests (which is highly doubtful), no one is going to like the food being served. And if you are not able to cater to the requests you asked them to tell you about, then they will feel slighted. “Why did they even ask – I TOLD them I don’t eat salad greens!” You’ve created yourself a situation that you can never win, no matter what you do.

Speaking of salad greens, you hear all the time about never eating raw vegetables in foreign countries, not having ice in your drinks, etc. That is not a problem here if you are eating at a retreat venue. Regardless of whether their food is good or not, you don’t need to worry about you or your participants getting sick from the food. If you have someone who is accustomed to eating meat and fast food all the time and comes on your vegetarian retreat, the drastic change in diet may ‘clean out the pipes’ a bit, but that is more to do with a sudden change in eating habits, and nothing to do with the quality or cleanliness of the food.

Okay so now that you have decided what type of food you want for your retreat – is that it? Not by a long shot. It’s come to the point where we have facilitated enough retreats to have seen the gamut of what kind of food retreat centres in Bali are offering to their groups. I have to say though, the quality of food that is now being served on retreats overall is so much better than it was just a few years ago. But that having been said, there is still a wide range in selection and quality. We have discontinued venue partnerships with certain places because of the complaints about the food.

Okay, so you’ve chosen the vegetarian menu. Great! Which one of these would you rather eat?

You’ll want to make sure that your definition of ‘vegetarian’ (if you choose to go that route) and their definition of vegetarian is the same thing. The places that take pride in their food and use it as one of their selling points, will often have photos on their website. But don’t let the website photos be the deciding factor. You will want to get a retreat menu from the venue to see what they are actually going to be serving on the retreat. One of the venues we no longer work with because of the food has this photo on their website:

Looks nice and healthy albeit a bit basic, but not bad! In reality, the food they served on the retreat was not only bad, but not nutritionally balanced. Just an example of what they served for lunch one day: white rice, baguette slices, a salad that was just lettuce, tomato & cucumber and a vegetable soup. I’d gone down to the kitchen and asked the ‘chef’ if he could point out the protein in that meal. He told me there were beans in the soup. It wasn’t bean soup… there were about 3 in the pot. I had to ask 3 times for eggs for breakfast because all they were serving was fruit and toast. This was a venue that employed a foreigner from the US and had made a big deal about him when we’d gone to do the site inspection, so it’s not like it was maybe a local who doesn’t know how to cook for westerners. In fact, from our experience, the places with just the locals working in the kitchen make the best food.

Okay so you have a venue, have seen their menu and it looks great! Is that it? Portion sizes are of the utmost importance. Especially for those groups who are doing the teacher trainings and literally doing yoga for 8 hours a day, they get hungry! The venue needs to be making enough food. Your meal plan should not be leaving participants hungry and having to order in between meal snacks because they will pass out before the next meal time.

When it comes time to organize a retreat, your biggest investment is your venue. You want to make sure that the venue you choose will not only host your retreat, but enhance the experience and be there to help you support your workshop goals. The choice of retreat menu is not usually just a random choice, it probably is an important component of the overall retreat. It’s important to be able to get a venue that will work with you to fine tune things if it’s not exactly what you wanted. There are venues who will simply say: ‘This is what we’re serving – take it or leave it!’ There are also those who go out of their way to accommodate.

As retreat facilitator, one of my biggest jobs is managing group leader expectations. When you are making your food requests, there are a few things you need to bear in mind. This is Bali. There are certain seasons for certain fruits and vegetables. There are foods that don’t grow here. There are foods that you just can’t get here. Part of my job is working like a liason between the venue and the group leaders to iron out all the details – food being one of them. It’s all fine and well to say I want beetroot in the salad when it’s in season at about Rp.6,000/kilo, but when it’s not in season it can go up to Rp.60,000/kilo because if they can get it, it had to be imported from somewhere. Also probably best to keep it local and seasonal to minimize the carbon footprint.

Are your vegetarians being treated equally?

I had a group leader that we’d just started working with say: “make whatever you want but please – No tempeh!” I asked her why and it was because she’d led a retreat (not at one of our venues) before where half of the participants were vegetarian and the other half weren’t. They served everyone the same thing, but for the vegetarians, they swapped out the meat with tempeh in every dish. Grilled fish and vegetables – tempeh and vegetables. Chicken wraps – tempeh wraps. stir fry with tempeh, curry with tempeh… tempeh tempeh tempeh. By the end of the retreat, all of the vegetarians has a deep seeded loathing for tempeh.

At least at this venue they were at was actually substituting the meat with something. I have heard of some places simply omitting the meat and calling it vegetarian.

If you are choosing a vegetarian or vegan menu or even a combination of veg and non-vegetarian, you will want to make sure that not only does it have a bit of imagination, but that it is nutritionally balanced. But even nutritionally balanced vegetarian food doesn’t necessarily taste good. For me, the measure of a great vegetarian meal is one I eat and love and not miss the meat… and this is coming from a girl who likes her deep-fried crispy pork skin.

We have a few venues that have allowed us to come into their kitchens, make the retreat menus for them and train their staff to make it. There are others that are happy to work with us to fine tune their retreat menu to the group leader’s requests. Those venues that are willing to do that are the ones that are the most intent on accommodating their groups.

So on that note, don’t overlook the importance of food on your retreat and make sure you know what they will be serving before you get there. It would be a shame after all the work and planning you put into running a retreat to have your participants say: “It would have been perfect if the food was better.”

If you have any questions and are thinking about planning a retreat in Bali, come and connect with us and we will work together to create the ultimate retreat experience: info@balibiuretreatcompany.com

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