Discovering Cuisine Tonique at Spa Eastman in Quebec’s Eastern Townships
By Bruce Sach
One delightful, unexpected benefit of our three-night culinary retreat at the Eastman Spa was meeting the other participants and the knowledge gleaned from them.
A mechanical engineer, a life coach, a software programmer, all had differing knowledge basis and differing points of view, and certainly not just on the subject of cooking!
But, along with seeking different ways of improving our lives, we all had one common goal – improving health through diet.
The location of the culinary retreat, known as the Cuisine Tonique is the Eastman Spa in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, a place well suited for relaxation and openness to new ideas.
Spa founder Jocelyna Dubuc has fashioned a wellness centre designed to help people discover new and stimulating paths in their lives. As she said, ‘we believe in the ‘art of living’, not merely as relating to food’.
During any given week, workshops on nutrition, fascia therapy, creative writing, tapping, the 5 Tibetans, and Decoding Feelings take place interspersed with visits to the spa’s indoor/outdoor pools with a self-guided circuit of infra-red spas, dry spas, hammam and cool Kneipp bathing pools. Brave souls can take dips in the east-facing pond with break-taking views of Mount Orford.
Yoga, Pilates and Aqua Form classes take place weekly and various treatments are also offered.
ABOVE: The interior of the Oasis Pavilion, where the cooking classes take place. (Photo: SpiritBird)
The culinary retreat lasts three days, and is held in a modern, and spacious kitchen, in the new Oasis pavilion where rooms are also located.
Participants can also lodge in one of the nine pavilions scattered over the huge 333-hectare property. (That’s over 3 hectares for each of the maximum 95 guests).
The workshop, explaining the secrets of the restaurant’s Tonique Cuisine is so popular that getting a spot can be difficult, at least in French. Only since January, 2025 is it offered in English. The maximum number of aspiring chefs is twelve.
A spa where only vegetables, fish and meats of quality, without gluten nor dairy products, with unprocessed and lacto-fermented offerings – who could say no to giving it a try? And what’s more, to learning the how to, from a local, highly experienced chef?
The key to the Cuisine Tonique is also slow-cooking, a technique employed by the Spa’s chef, Jean-Marc Enderlin.
ABOVE: Solène Thouin teaches the Tonique approach to cooking. (Photo: Carole Jobin)
Our instructor, Solène Thouin, is a chef and nutritional therapist and worked for several years with Crudessence, the Montreal company that pioneered raw food long before it became popular. She leads the workshop on the basics of the Cuisine Tonique while adding tips on how to efficiently prepare recipes that might appear complicated at first blush. (The making and use of okara – a Japanese soy-based residue comes to mind).
Naturally, we ate the meals we produced, but all other meals are served in the main inn’s restaurant, where the same Cuisine Tonique formula that Solène teaches is followed. The inn is located seven minutes away by foot through a full, mature forest.
Again, founder Dubuc spoke of ‘unleashing the power of Nature’. Early in her twenties, she experienced inflammation pain that led her to believe she had to change her diet. ‘The body is our lie detector, when what you’re eating isn’t working, the body will let you know through symptoms’, she states emphatically. Doctors told her she’d merely ‘grown too quickly’. She didn’t buy it.
A visitor to the spa’s restaurant, unaware of the ‘food revolution’ taking place, might first notice it during their first breakfast. There’s no butter for the gluten-free bread and no milk for one’s coffee!
And the cooking retreat with Solène will help you reinforce the habits you’ve learned, once you go home and want to continue on your own. (She’s prepared a mini-recipe book including all the recipes from the cooking retreat).
Most of the participants had considerable kitchen experience and a highly developed understanding of the benefits of proper nutrition. That said, Solène allowed us to find our own path and did not preach. If asked, she was always able to explain why the Tonique approach was beneficial to health.
Photos: Carole Jobin
I had limited experience: I’d never made cookies in my life. The hands-on approach came with subtle guidance from Solène and other aspiring chefs, as we all helped one another. It worked for me.
Another added bonus: eating our own-cooked meals overlooking a picture-perfect view of the forest, on one occasion, right after sunrise!
Woven through the workshop, Solène gave us practical tips on not wasting food, using compost to make salads and broths, picking the best pots, pans, cutting boards and knives, as well as elegant serving tips. She helped ‘save’ more than one recipe! She even had healthy choices when cravings for unhealthy snacks occurred: think fennel and avocado.
Founder Jocelyna Dubuc is a subtle presence, peeking in to classes from time to time. One aspiring chef, J.R., had been to many high-end retreats in North America and stated, “Jocelyna really cares about making people healthier, it’s not just about making money, in the short term”.
The proof? Many of the guests have visited numerous times!
HEADER IMAGE: Cuisine Tonique’s anti-inflammatory, healthy, gourmet tuna. (Photo: Courtesy Spa Eastman)
