Health & Wellness: Plant-based Cuisine and Sustainable Local Seafood by Chef Alisha Dawn Stoute of ECO Lifestyle & Lodge
Chef Alisha Dawn Stoute is slicing a handful of cherry tomatoes that she’s just harvested from ECO Lifestyle & Lodge’s new off-site garden.
— By Amie Watson
— Photography: Kenneth Theysen
The boutique hotel’s concept of sustainability is reflected in locally grown, organic and heirloom vegetables like these red, orange, yellow and green beauties. They take centre stage on Stoute’s breakfast, brunch and dinner menus. These ones are destined for her own dinner, but she offers me a couple of slices before tossing them into her salad.
With produce coming both from nearby farmers and ECO’s own garden, Stoute and her four-woman kitchen have turned ECO into a destination for health, wellness and plant-based dining on Barbados’ wild East Coast.
Set on a gully leading to a secluded bay, the 10-room inn feels like a secret oasis that you want to keep to yourself. Guests descend an outdoor stairway to natural rock pools and freshwater spring below. The zen ambiance makes it popular for yoga retreats, hikers and picnickers who explore coastal rock pools at low tide. There’s even a trail that takes you to Peg Farm and Nature Reserve – “the best eggs on Barbados”, says Stoute, who uses them in everything from her lobster eggs benedict with herb hollandaise to her tuna tartare niçoise.
Following the Slow Food Barbados ethos, almost 100% of the restaurant’s fruits, vegetables and seafood are local and sustainable. That includes the shado beni, a pungent cilantro-like herb used in yogurt for tacos, and the coconut jelly that Stoute ferments with cashews into a vegan coconut yogurt breakfast bowl served daily.
As she gives me a tour of the abundant bushes of basil plants, pink okra and baby eggplant, Stoute tells me about her culinary influences, her new appreciation for plant-based cuisine and her dad’s influence on her lobster truffled mac pie.
You studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa and then worked in Toronto before coming back to Barbados and launching ECO, where the menu is mostly fish- and plant-based, with a large amount of vegan, gluten-free and raw options. Were you always into these kinds of food?
It wasn’t what I was doing in Canada and at first I was a bit hesitant about the menu concept. But I learned a lot about the plant-based recipes and lifestyle from Manuela Scalini. A large percentage of Manuela’s influence is on the menu and I would attribute most of my plant-based knowledge to her. Now I take what I’ve learned and create other things that are completely my own, like vegan calamari.
What else influences your menu?
The different food cultures I’ve come across in my professional journey. Asian, Mediterranean, Thai, Latino – like the Bajanzuelan arepas – and a lot of French from being in Toronto and Ottawa.
What’s charcoil soil?
Charcoil soil is activated charcoal powder with rawmesan – a raw version of Parmesan that’s based on walnuts. It adds texture and colour to the ECO salad of the day with mixed leaves from one of our farmers, seasonal vegetables, fruit or nuts and a fresh turmeric dressing. There’s also rawmesan in our beetroot rawvioli. It’s raw beetroot slices filled with vegan cashew ricotta and a creamy green goddess cashew sauce.
Your menu is definitely not all diet food. Tell me about your lobster truffled mac pie.
My dad’s mac pie recipe has always been the legit mac pie recipe. I tweaked it to work with lobster. He absolutely does not use truffle in his, though.
What about your foraged tempura purslane?
The sea purslane grows just down the road by the cliffs, by the water’s edge. We clean it, process it and fry it in cassava flour. It’s very nutritionally dense. The frying is a bit of a guilty pleasure.
You serve breakfast Monday to Saturday and brunch on Sunday. What nights are you open for dinner?
We serve dinner Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Guests tend to want to go to Oistins on Friday night, so we decided to close that night and provide transportation for those staying at the Inn in our “ECO”-friendly electric shuttle. We also offer free transport for visitors in groups of four or more staying on the West Coast.
How do you manage to eat locally all year when certain fruits and vegetables aren’t available?
We try to get as much of what’s in season from a variety of markets, vendors or farmers and then freeze it or make jams and pickles from it. We’ve purchased as many as 350 mangoes at a time and get some strange reactions from some of the purveyors. We sell our pickles and preserves along with other goodies, such as dehydrated mango and sargassum chips, in our ECO shop.
How popular is your brunch? Is it true that people come just for the pancakes?
Yes, the old-fashioned pancakes with warm maple syrup and spiced butter. People keep saying they're trying to come for brunch, but we're always full. They have to call two weeks in advance to reserve a table!
What’s your favourite Bajan food?
I love a good souse. It’s not on the menu, but I have done a lobster souse before with pickled lobster and pickled breadfruit. I’ve also done a snapper souse.
What else do you love about working at ECO?
I would not be able to get through without the staff. My Sous-chef Sofia Chin Fatt is incredible and the girls, Joy and Andrea, they’ve been there for 15 plus years, when ECO was run by the previous owner. They’re the sweetest ladies. Plus the inn’s owners are amazing people. It’s like a family. That’s the kind of atmosphere I want to work in.
