I’M mendacity on an enormous banana leaf as a smiling therapist slathers my physique with chocolate.
That is Resort Chocolat, the luxury choc chain’s boutique lodge in St Lucia.
The thought for the corporate to launch its Rabot Resort started the identical approach many sensible plans may do — over a number of glasses of rum.
Basking within the Caribbean solar on the agency’s 140-acre cocoa plantation, boss Angus Thirlwell is alleged to have thought: “Wouldn’t it’s nice if everybody may come right here?”
So Hotel Chocolat constructed an precise Resort Chocolat — and thank goodness it did.
The 14 hilltop lodges are set in tropical jungle with views over the majestic Piton Mountains and are a chocolate lover’s paradise. Contemporary off our eight-and-a-half-hour direct British Airways flight from the UK, the very first thing on our listing is to tuck into the “cocoa delicacies”.
Let’s face it, we’re right here to eat. Each single dish within the lodge’s open-air Rabot Restaurant is infused with a component of chocolate, even the savoury meals.
Company can bask in scallops marinated in cacao, adopted by pulled pork coated in cacao nib and breadcrumbs, earlier than tackling the mouthwatering desserts.
You’ll need at the very least a number of days simply to work your approach by way of the menu.
There may be even white chocolate mash — and as improvement chef David Demaison says on the menu: “It shouldn’t work, however it does.”
As cocktail followers, we excitedly dive into the alcoholic choices and are usually not disenchanted. Lots of them, together with our soon-to-be favorite chocolate daiquiris and cacao bellinis, are decadent sufficient to have counted as desserts, if we had been watching our waistlines.
Fortunately, everyone knows that energy don’t depend on vacation, so we didn’t hesitate earlier than ordering the mouth-watering Rabot Chocolate Lava sponge afterwards.
Meals apart, the restaurant is an expertise in itself, overlooking the lodge’s 50ft infinity pool with volcanic views and a jungle soundtrack supplied by birds.
The within-outside really feel continues as we arrive in our eco-lodge, which comes with netting across the four-poster mattress to maintain out any pesky bugs.
The rooms are usually not air- conditioned on account of their semi-open design, however the pay-off is drifting off to sleep with the sounds of the jungle and funky ocean breeze at evening.
Earplugs are supplied for these wishing to close out the fixed hum of tree frogs.
The adults-only lodge has six cheaper rooms, the Lodges. However for many who can stretch to one of many eight Luxe Lodges, you additionally get a personal terrace with knockout views of Petit Piton.
Sizzling sticky mess
Nonetheless, any room that comes with a Resort Chocolat Velvetiser and complimentary home made cookies is a winner in my eyes.
To proceed our quest for extra chocolate, we strive the lodge’s distinctive Tree-to-Bar Expertise.
This entails making our very personal choc bars from beans grown on the plantation. Resort Chocolat is the one firm to fabricate cocoa on St Lucia, after shopping for and restoring the 250-year-old Rabot Property in 2006.
The model claims the island’s fertile volcanic soil, excessive altitude and rainforest water are the perfect cocktail of circumstances for cocoa manufacturing.
We see this primary hand as our pleasant information Monique exhibits us how the workforce accumulate the pods, ferment and dry the beans on website after which ship them 4,000 miles to the UK to be made into Resort Chocolat merchandise.
5 million candies are made every week in its Cambridgeshire headquarters, and ours would positively not have handed their high quality management.
As a substitute of the pristinely packaged bars you see in UK shops, mine is a sizzling and sticky mess, however continues to be greedily wolfed up.
Barely extra pleasing to the attention is the cooler field of Cocoa Beer we’re handed for the night as we sail off to look at the sundown on a ship journey.
Not glad with consuming and consuming chocolate, I guide into the Cocoa Spa to be coated within the tasty deal with from head to toe with the £95 cacao detox physique wrap therapy.
Banana leaves
Earlier than I do know it, I’m mendacity on that big banana leaf, my modesty protected by a towel, whereas being exfoliated with a Rabot Property-grown cacao scrub.
This makes approach for a paste made with clay, contemporary banana and cacao that’s utilized to my physique in a thick coating.
“You possibly can style it if you want,” says the sweetness therapist as I gaze curiously on the combination.
Unsurprisingly, it’s simply as scrumptious because the restaurant sauces. To lock within the nutrient-rich masks, I’m wrapped in softened, freshly picked banana leaves, after which instructed to lie there similar to a freshly ready snack.
Twenty sticky but blissful minutes later — and after a fairly thorough bathe — the ultimate stage of the method is the Rabot magnificence cacao and shea physique lotion.
I can’t assist however suppose if Willy Wonka had opened a spa it might virtually definitely have provided this package deal.
Thirlwell says that he launched Resort Chocolat in 2004 with a £10,000 mortgage and a easy dream of “injecting some enjoyable” into the chocolate trade.
After I dined, drank and actually bathed within the stuff throughout my keep, I can safely say that he has achieved that in abundance at Rabot Resort.
GO: ST LUCIA
COVID: All passengers should current proof of a damaging PCR check taken 5 days or much less earlier than journey. Absolutely vaccinated travellers are usually not required to quarantine. Present guidelines require pre-departure check earlier than returning to the UK and a PCR check on or earlier than day two.
GETTING THERE: Virgin Atlantic resumes direct flights from Gatwick on December 18. From £459pp in Financial system Mild. See virginatlantic.com or name 0344 8747 747.
STAYING THERE: Lodges on the Rabot Resort are from £211pppn. See hotelchocolat.com/uk/rabothotel.
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