Chef Prepared Meals:

How food helps heal
the gut and brain

Our Executive Chef Miriam Echeverria devises menus with input from our clinical and wellness teams. Together we ensure the food and drink served on retreat supports your healing and wellness journey.

At Dimensions Algonquin Highlands we offer carefully balanced plant-forward meals, that are nutrient-dense and respectful of your dietary needs and preferences. We use organic, seasonal and locally sourced ingredients—from our community partner farms and kitchen garden—we focus on supporting your gut health, brain health and immune system.

To aid digestion and the absorption of nutrients, our kitchen team incorporates fermented foods and drinks into every menu. Good bacteria is necessary for the rest-and-digest process that underlies healing. It also optimizes brain function.

Our executive chef is an expert at layering flavours into every dish. She uses methods such as dehydration, pickling, juicing, and making broths, powders, and stocks from scratch to boost flavour in creative ways while eliminating food waste. Any part of the ingredient that cannot be used is composted on-site, so we can return precious nutrients to the soil.

The Culinary tourism Alliance recently designated Dimensions Algonquin Highlands kitchen FEAST ON®-certified, because we meet their stringent benchmarks for sourcing ingredients and artisanal food and drink products locally. Dimensions stands out as a FEAST ON®-certified establishment for its third-party assessment, which showed that 94.49% of the food we serve is locally sourced. In 2022, other FEAST ON®-certified businesses averaged 54% in this criterion. Our commitment to local ingredients means supporting the community we belong to and minimizing our carbon footprint, as well as ensuring guests enjoy the most nutrient-rich ingredients possible.

Cooking from scratch each day, Miriam draws on her extensive experience and cultural knowledge, working in fine-dining restaurants in Canada and Mexico. A culinary artist at heart, she is constantly inspired by the fresh ingredients available in this rural community and proud to have never repeated a dish on the dinner menu. Her creativity means meals are not only healthy but appealing to the eye and taste buds.