TALISE CAFE

THE CLASS:

When it’s a health kick you want, it’s hard to beat the kitchen of Chef Gabi, executive wellbeing chef for Talise. We attend a raw food class to learn how to make a tasty yet nutritious vegan breakfast. However, other healthy options are available on request, and while it’s an instructive class, she also offers lessons that are more hands-on.

THE FOOD:

Chef Gabi takes us through the simple process of creating a vegan bircher muesli and accompanying green juice, taking time to explain the health-boosting properties of each ingredient: flaxseeds for healthy fats, steel cut oats for energy, banana and apple for healthy carbs and antioxidant boosting berries and persimmons. She also teaches us how to make a morning green juice with green papaya, parsley, lemon, celery and pineapple, to get your body detoxing and your skin glowing.

THE CHEF:

Chef Gabi has been with Talise Nutrition since 2007, ensuring that guests have access to healthy, organic, plant-based meals. Before that she managed a vegetarian fine dining restaurant in her home country of Germany. She’s a cookbook author too, and an expert on diabetes, as well as offering obesity consultations.

THE VERDICT:

The best thing about this class is that it makes healthy eating seem a lot less daunting than it is. The ingredients are high quality but simple, and Chef Gabi’s warm attitude to wellbeing really makes you want to replace that morning coffee and Danish pastry with something a little greener.

Talise Cafe, Mina A’Salam, Madinat Jumeirah, Al Sufouh, Dubai, daily 7am to 8.30pm. Tel: (04) 3668888. Taxi: Mina A’Salam, Madinat Jumeirah. jumeirah.com