02 May 2024

St Lucia

We offer a wide choice of cheap flights to St Lucia together with St Lucia hotels, tours and self-drive itineraries.

Other Caribbean Reviews

Gourmets of the Caribbean

Helen Minsky calls it the Miracle of Jade Mountain – or how to eat mountains of food in St Lucia and lose weight!

St Lucia - Jade Mountain's extraordinary chefs

St Lucia - Each room comes with it's own pool and Piton views

1 Jade Mountain's extraordinary chefs 2 Each room comes with it's own pool 3 Fab food and stunning vistas

ANY SENSIBLE PERSON serious about losing weight would have booked into a

health farm. But what the hell, you only live once.

So, with the choice of a week in the Caribbean or a week of starvation at home, we decided – no contest. We would ditch the diet – just for the time being, of course. But was it wise to opt for a gourmet all-inclusive break at one of the most exclusive hotels in the world, also throwing in a haute cuisine cookery course?

My daughter and I had optimistically started a slimming regime together at New Year. But our feeling of terrible guilt at choosing six days of feasting on the Caribbean island of St Lucia was, it turned out, misplaced. Miraculously, instead of piling on the pounds, we found that our clothes were getting looser by the day. Surely, we couldn’t possibly eat this much and be losing weight?

We gorged ourselves on three delicious meals a day, plus endless fruit punches – and the occasional alcoholic strawberry daiquiri – and also learned how to cook perfect scallops, rack of lamb and Caribbean pumpkin soup.

One of the most exclusive hotels in the world

Curiously, at the end of it all we discovered we had managed to lose an astonishing six kilos between us. How could this be possible? Jonathan Deardon, our Cordon Bleu-trained chef explained: ‘Believe it or not, Caribbean cooking is among the healthiest in the world. It uses no butsening.

‘Food is fresh, not processed and enhanced with garlic, ginger, pepper, herbs and fruits and never with sauces made using cream or butter.’ Jonathan, a star of Gary Rhodes’s programme Across The Caribbean, is the executive chef of extraordinary Jade Mountain, surely the only hotel in the world where each vast room (around 25ft by 70ft ) has its own infinity swimming pool.

No, the pool is not outside on the balcony – but actually IN the room. And the view from each pool is to die for. They look over St Lucia’s two famous volcanic mountains – the Pitons, which are classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Owner and creator of Jade Mountain, Canadian-born architect Nick Troubetzkoy, realised that guests might have difficulty tearing themselves away from this panorama, so he threw in individual butlers for each room to cater for the most whimsical requests.

The view from each pool is to die for

Our majo domo was 6ft Vito, on call 24 hours a day to bring breakfast, lunch and dinner, punctuated with rum punches, call a shuttle car to take us to the beach, arrange trips to the rainforest and boats to take us to see whales or dolphins.

Set on a hill overlooking two stunning beaches, Jade Mountain lies above the Anse Chastanet resort, also owned by Troubetzkoy and his wife Karolin, and both hotels are a short water taxi-ride away from the delightfully ramshackle town of Soufriere where fresh tuna, mahi-mahi and kingfish are brought every morning to the jetty by local fishermen.

Also nearby is St Lucia’s seemingly active volcano, hilariously described on a notice outside as ‘the world’s only drive-in volcano’.

Thankfully, it is not very active these days - it merely has lava which bubbles and steams - and you can, as the notice says, drive right up to the crater and, for a small fee, bathe in the volcano’s hot, sulphurous waters which are reputed to be beneficial for all kinds of ailments.

Nearby is the 50ft Toraille Waterfall, where for another small fee you can bathe in a cool pool below the cascade. Not far away is a waterfall at the well-shaded Diamond Botanical Gardens, which also boasts mineral baths where French Empress Josephine reputedly took the efficacious waters.

We had planned to ask Vito to arrange for us to climb the Pitons with a guide – the Gros Piton (the fatter of the two mountains) can be scaled in a relatively easy threehour hike, we were told. But, sadly, my daughter tripped over the morning after we arrived, twisting her ankle and we spent the next day investigating the delights of the local hospital.

St Jude’s Hospital, we learned, had burned down last year. So, Soufriere’s A&E department was housed for the moment at the five-year-old Olympic sized George Odlum Sports stadium, complete with gold chandeliers and red carpets.

The X-ray machine is kept in an office next to what was once a hospitality lounge for visiting dignitaries.

On duty was Cuba and Tel Aviv trained house surgeon Dr. Wilson, who assured us the hugely swollen ankle was merely badly sprained.

However, walking – or indeed any exercise – was out of the question and so what else could we do but sunbathe and eat, lazily watching the hummingbirds?

We gorged ourselves on three meals a day

So how on earth did we lose weight? A typical dinner menu at Jade included flat rice-crusted diver scallops with roasted crab cous cous, balsamic zucchini sauté, followed by beetroot and carrot salad with marinated onions and saffron dressing and roasted warm lobster tail, asparagus risotto and seafood bouillabaisse.

There was a tamarind sorbet between courses and we allowed ourselves a couple of slices of homebaked parmesan or lavender bread.

We said no to the desserts, missing out on the likes of caramelised mango crostada with spiced white guava ice cream and chocolate pot de crème with mocha whipped cream.

Not a bad price to pay for a luxury week in paradise – and an unintentional diet.

0330·100·2220i 0330 calls are included within inclusive minutes package on mobiles, otherwise standard rates apply. X 0330 calls are included within inclusive minutes package on mobiles, otherwise standard rates apply. X