INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA
Updated: 2 days ago
Taste, Presentation, Technique, Body
After years in Michelin-starred kitchens, Javier Díaz Esterri began asking one more question when creating each dish: what role it should play in everything a guest eats over the course of the day.
Javier Díaz Esterri, executive chef of Salvia at ZEM Wellness Clinic Altea, spent the early years of his career in Michelin-starred restaurants. We meet him in Salvia’s kitchen. Taste, presentation and technique once defined how he judged a plate. In 2013, he took a course with Michel Guérard. In his professional biography, he describes it as training in cuisine minceur and cuisine santé nature. There, he encountered cooking built around dietary goals but held to the standards of a three-Michelin-star restaurant. A fourth criterion joined the original three: nutritional purpose.
Over the past twelve years, he says, he has studied nutrition, read widely and worked with professionals in the field, with ideas about longevity, digestion and anti-inflammatory eating shaping the way he cooks.
He began developing recipes for ZEM in 2019. A nutritionist then helped arrange them into daily meal plans, balancing proteins, carbohydrates, fats and micronutrients. He calls his approach a “therapy diet”.
“The kitchen is complex, but it’s simple at the same time.”
INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA
A new dish begins with the season and the role the meal needs to play that day. The ingredients he starts from change depending on whether he is developing a protein-led dish, something he associates with easier digestion, or a dish for the anti-inflammatory part of the programme. Spices, techniques, textures and flavours are already moving through his mind as he settles on the base of the dish.
“The colours tell me a lot.” Colour helps him sort through the options. When he is developing a dish for the anti-inflammatory part of his plan, orange points him towards carrots, pumpkin and turmeric. From there he turns to what will determine the dish itself: flavour, texture and technique.
“I have a lot of flavours in my head.”
INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA
The nutritional framework narrows the field, and his memory of flavour takes over.
As he runs through the produce he receives from Finca Althaya, ZEM’s organic farm, he gets as far as spinach, kale, apricots, peaches and berries.
“One moment.” He leaves and comes back with a sheet of paper. The list for that week reads differently: onions, courgettes, aubergines, beetroot, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes.
The farm sends the kitchen a weekly list of what is ready to harvest. Thyme, rosemary, basil, coriander, parsley and tarragon make their way into the recipes alongside vegetables, leafy greens and fruit that change with the seasons.
In the future, he would like to have a say in what is grown on the farm, so that crop choices can be tied more closely to the dishes he develops at Salvia.
One crop he has in mind is pitaya, or dragon fruit. It requires night-time pollination, a practical complication he points out straight away. Açaí bowls, he says, are already a fixture on wellness menus. For a new pitaya bowl, he is working with organic pitaya from Elche, using the fruit’s flavour and texture as the starting point for a dish he is developing for both breakfast and dessert.
He has been studying reishi and lion’s mane for around five years and uses them in coffee, teas, drinks, dishes and desserts. He describes them as medicinal mushrooms and associates them with the immune system, digestion, the heart and the mind. The sense of fullness he attributes to them also has a place in his lower-calorie plans.
Reishi has also found its way into tiramisu, a dessert that carries the same culinary principle through to the final course. His version of the Valencian classic arnadí is made with purple sweet potato, berries and almonds. Salvia avoids refined sugar; sweetness comes from fruit, raisins and sweet potato. He describes purple sweet potato as a source of prebiotic fibre and associates it with digestion.
For a recipe guests can take from Salvia into their own kitchens, he chooses gazpacho. Raw seasonal vegetables, olive oil, lemon juice and avocado go into the blender; the mix changes as spring produce gives way to summer. He is drawn to its Mediterranean roots, the freshness of the raw ingredients and the simplicity of the preparation.
INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA INSIDE THE KITCHEN AT ZEM ALTEA
When asked to choose a dish that represents Salvia, he picks fish with seaweed, broccolini, pesto, green vegetables and slices of radish that at first glance resemble onion. As he talks through the plate, every ingredient comes with a reason. He associates the green colour with health and the pesto with protein digestion. When he comes to the broccolini, he mentions the eyes and the stomach, all within his own nutritional framework.
From the fish, the conversation moves to dessert. From dessert to reishi. Then to morning coffee, teas and smoothies.
“No single dish represents us. The whole concept does.”
While he is still talking about that green dish, he is already thinking about what the guest ate that morning and what the kitchen will serve later that day.
All images courtesy of ZEM Wellness Clinic Altea.
For more information about ZEM Wellness Clinic Altea, its programmes and services, visit the ZEM website.
This article is part of AH Magazine Issue No. 8.
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