Chiva Som Executive Chef Paisarn Cheewinsiriwat will entice Sydney diners with his signature Spa Cuisine from May 11-15, when he presents selected dishes at the famous Bathers’ Pavilion restaurant on Balmoral Beach.

Paisarn will work alongside the award-winning chef Serge Dansereau and his team, who are acclaimed for their “uniquely Australian” cuisine and diners will have a choice of both Chiva-Som and Bathers’ menus.

Spa Cuisine has come a long way over the past decade and now ranks as a major consideration for people when choosing which health resort to visit. Whilst facilities and treatments continue to remain important to the health conscious, so too is the cuisine on offer.

Ultimate Travel spoke with Chef Paisarn at Bather's Pavilion at the start of his five-day stint at Bather's Pavilion.

How does your cuisine differ from normal spa cuisine?

We take it seriously and maybe other places don’t have the know-how on how to produce top quality spa cuisine. I’ve seen some places go like this: “okay let’s put all this produce in at once”. At Chiva Som we have a naturopath and a nutritionist and I work with them to prepare dishes specifically for individuals. But then we create food that is wonderful to eat, it’s not something that’s inedible, and we try and make it food that’s healthy but also fun to eat. My background is not in spa cuisine. I actually began with French cooking and eventually I came to do this. It has taken a while to build up the knowledge and I think I’ve been able to bring a fun element into a spa environment.

Was it difficult making that transition from traditional French cooking to spa cuisine?

I remember my first day I was given a trial. They said: “okay can you cook without butter or flour” and all the things that make French cooking. I obviously did get the job. It’s a little like being a classically trained musician, in that you can then turn your hand to rock ‘n roll, but it’s more difficult going back the other way.

You have your own garden at Chiva Som, that must make your job a lot easier.

Yes, we have our own garden and we grow herbs and vegetables. In the past often the produce in the garden was enough to sustain our guests when we had only 10 rooms or so. Now that we have 57 rooms the organic garden is not enough to prepare food for our guests. So now what we’re trying to do is encourage our local farmers to produce organic food. This has been a little difficult as the whole organic concept has never been big in Thailand. So when you say: “can you grown something without any chemical”, they say: “what, you must be crazy”. But we are getting there and we are educating local people how to grow organic with no chemicals.

If you can’t get a certain ingredient or product, what do you do?

We try all our local farmers to keep the freshness and authenticity of our food and we only have to import very rarely. There are some vegetables but also pears, we can’t grow this, some berries. We can grow strawberries but not blackberries so if we need these things we will import it. But the overwhelming majority of food is produced locally.

Do you get inspiration from travelling?

Yes, it’s very important and I’m always learning this way because my philosophy is centred around the freshness of products and with local products. So when I come up with a new menu, I want to see what is available locally. Like when l first came to Australia  I thought “wow, this is all so good”. It’s such good quality, vibrant colours and it’s all very very fresh which is what I’m always looking for.

Where are your favourite places to travel?

That is a really difficult one. My favourite place changes from time to time, I love Hong Kong and New York and Australia is also one of my favourite destinations and what I see is that the cooking in Australia is so modern. You have Asian cooking, Italian cooking, along with others and I see the local people can actually use chopsticks as well. But really I like going anywhere that serves good food and you always learn from this.