Thailand

Meliá Chiang Mai sustainability news: The Spanish brand’s hotel in Northern Thailand’s famous city has launched a two-night stay package that routes a portion of the proceeds to a food rescue foundation.

The Sustainability Package includes two nights’ accommodation with breakfast and one three-course set dinner for two based on seasonal, locally sourced ingredients at MAI Restaurant and Bar on the 21st floor.

The package supports Scholars of Sustenance (SOS) Thailand, a food rescue foundation established in 2016 to enhance the country’s food system. SOS Thailand aims to minimise needless loss of surplus food and improve food equity by redistributing quality surplus food on a daily basis from hotels, grocers, and restaurants to communities in need in Bangkok, Phuket, Hua Hin, Chiang Mai and other places.

The contemporary Thai set dinner is part of Meliá Chiang Mai’s ‘360° Cuisine’ program, in which the hotel works closely with local farmers to help improve sustainability and encourage ethical production.

As much of each ingredient is used – roots, leaves, stems, stalks and more – in a ‘thoughtful cooking process’ before ‘plate to farm’ food waste returns to the farms as fertilizer. Leftover cooking oil is recycled into biodiesel.

The set menu’s first course is a choice of either consume, dried redtail catfish, seasonal mushrooms and locally sourced greens, or Khao Soi salad bowl with khao soi dressing, tai lue tofu, wheat, and cage-free eggs. The main course is a choice of either grilled ai-Angus rib eye beef with dried galangal gravy and San Pa Tong rice, baked salmon fillet with nham prik oung relish and pandan rice, or based seasonal vegetables from the hotel’s organic farm with pomelo zest cream sauce. Organic longan pudding with butterscotch sauce and coconut ice-cream round out the culinary experience.

The ‘360° Cuisine’ program’s network of ethical and chemical-free suppliers includes organic gourmet farm Rong Khum in Sa Pa Tong and Jartisann’s Original Thai Cheese, which crafts artisanal cheese made from high-quality, locally sourced raw cow’s milk. The hotel sources the likes of organic Jasmine rice, cage-free eggs, fresh organic milk free of added hormones, vegetables such as betel leaves, coriander, spring onion, star gooseberry and chili, and fruits including longan, lychee, papaya, dragon fruit and bananas from Rong Khum for guests’ meals at Mai Restaurant & Bar, Laan Na Kitchen, MAI The Sky Bar and Ruen Kaew Lounge.

The hotel also works with universities to educate and train upcoming generations of hospitality professionals about sustainable farming, culinary and waste management practices.

The Sustainability Package is available until June 14 this year. To contact the hotel or to book the Sustainability Package, email reservation.chiangmai@melia.com or call +66 52 090 699.