Today on the spa à la carte menu, we have the Beluga caviar hair treatment, followed by the black truffle facial and the white chocolate cellulite cream...
On balance you might prefer to sip a vintage Semillon than bathe in it. And most gourmets would prefer to eat Beluga caviar than have it slathered on their hair. But before you lift that Sevruga canapé to your lips - it might be better employed elsewhere. No, really. The rare breed of fish eggs is packed full of omega-3 fatty acids that work wonders on the skin and hair.
Caviar is a potent conditioning agent and can revive dry and damaged hair better than most manufactured unguents. The fatty acids encourage the production of collagen and keratin - the proteins that give hair a shiny gloss. Catherine Zeta Jones and countless west-London devotees have been booking into chic Brompton Cross hair salon, Hari's, for the Princess Caviar Treatment, where a mask of Iranian Beluga fish eggs is applied to nourish hair follicles. Nibble on bite-sized caviar snacks while the vitamins do their work.
Caviar has also been a proven super-effective anti-aging ingredient that plumps and revitalizes the skin. La Prairie based a whole line on this premise. The signature La Prairie Skin Caviar Facial Treatment, available at London's Claridge's, instantly firms the skin and is a staple for pre-Oscar preparations.
Other gastronomic giants such as truffles, chocolate and fine wine have joined caviar as the new super-ingredients in skincare. Wine spas are applying the tenets of the wine-making process to beauty. One such is the award-winning vineyard, Constantia Uitsig in South Africa, which uses the expertise of its 17th-century working wine estate to pulse wine's antioxidant properties into the skin.
It seems almost counterintuitive to herald chocolate as a superfood but it too is packed full of the vitamins and minerals your skin needs. One new company, Dafla Skin Care Institute, has taken this knowledge to new heights with their new Ishi Elements label that offers a serious Choco Therapy system. The list of products reads better than the dessert menu at The Ivy: tiramisu face serum, white chocolate cellulite cream and chocolate orange mousse facemask all feature.
Dafla is among the first to harness the youth-instilling properties of truffles, creating a black truffle, coriander and star anise facial which firms the skin. White truffles are also used to combat sun damage. A new lightening cream using a rare white truffle manipulates the body's production of melanin to alter the signs of age-spots.
In New York City chef and self-professed spa junkie Geoffrey Zakarian (former head chef at Arpège in Paris and The Dorchester in London) has been playing consultant to the massage menu at the hip Acqua Beauty Bar. He has created a mask of organic cucumber, melon, strawberries, aloe gel, ginger, honey, vitamin-C, powdered milk and Fiji water, which is all applied with a fragrant zucchini blossom. Bon appétit! - Sophie Grove
www.harissalon.com
www.claridges.co.uk
www.constantiauitsig.co.za
www.ishiuk.com
www.acquabeautybar.com