So does the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. (That's the endlessly photographed one that looks like the Sydney Opera House standing on tiptoe but with just one sail. Or a massive cactus leaf, only white.
) The Town House Galleria, with its hand-painted vaulted ceilings and historic architecture, has gone further. It has asked a Swiss certification organization to devise a seven-star rating and then test the Galleria against it to see if it measures up. Only guests indifferent to the contents of their Visa statements won't worry about the Galleria's room rates.
These include being met off the plane by a chauffeur-driven Bentley and a glass of champagne, then a spin along a restricted route that avoids unpleasantness like common traffic to your suite (no mere rooms here), where a bowl of caviar and more champagne await, along with your own butler to boss around. While hotels anxious to secure return visits from their clients are offering anything from the use of luxury cars and DVD players to massive flat-screen TVs, massages and the company of a friendly dog, dining-room menus are also getting a makeover designed to attract the conscientious and environmentally aware guest. It's no longer enough to install celebrity chefs in the kitchen.
Nor to buy the best-tasting produce available. Now it's got to be organic to be good enough to impress. Increasingly in Europe's small hotels and bed breakfasts, particularly those run by farms, serving organic food is becoming less and less a rarity.
In the Welsh town of St Davids in February, the TYF Hotel became the first organic hotel certified by the Welsh Organic Scheme. Not everything that can be consumed there is organic, however. Organic certification for wild fish, for instance, doesn't yet exist anywhere.
And who knows if whiskey, gin and tonic can be certified organic -- although there are a growing number of good organic wines in Europe and the United States, Australia and New Zealand. These changes could be put down to the foibles of well-meaning small entrepreneurs trying to do the right thing, or looking to come up with some gimmick to draw in the customers. But it's a surprise when elegant institutions of long standing in the hotel trade such as London's venerable Claridge's in the high-end Mayfair district go a little bit green.
This is the hotel of the kings and queens of Europe. It's a home-from-home for Britain's own dwindling aristocracy and figures from the section of the cultural scene that doesn't deal in loud noise. Renaud Gregoire, its food beverage director, was persuaded by his executive chef, Martyn Nail, to go as organic as is feasible when you have celebrities upstairs calling down for out-of-season asparagus and strawberries.
Nail joins the growing band of chefs who believe it's their responsibility to make their clients aware of the environmental impact of choosing food that isn't local. They would like diners who have been used for so long to eating whatever they want whenever they want to accept that in demanding produce that has to be imported from wherever else it's in season, they should factor in the flyer miles it costs to get the food onto their plates. They haven't gone whole hog, sadly.
So far, the move is limited to organic options on the hotel's Du Jour menu and an organic menu at breakfast. Claridge's has been surprised by the popularity of this breakfast instead of the regular one that's also available. Difficult to speculate on the feelings of their other guests, but the British at least feel strongly about breakfast and are not easy to push to change their habits so early in the day.
But choose Claridge's organic breakfast and you'll be eating eggs whose yolks are bright orange like grandma used to make, and antibiotic-free, growth-hormone-free bacon, which you can smother with homemade organic ketchup if you wish. The organic breakfast costs more than the regular one. Still, in the few weeks it has been available, more than one-quarter of all breakfast orders are for the organic, not the regular version.
Breakfast does offer an easy meal to turn organic at home, with organic milk, yogurt and eggs all now available in supermarkets, and though organic bacon is a little more difficult to find, availability is increasing. -- Bring a large pot of water to a boil, then add the tomatoes for 1 minute and drain. When they are cool enough to handle, slip off their skins, halve and deseed them, pressing the seeds through a sieve to extract the juices.
-- Add the tomatoes and juice to an enamel or non-reactive pot with the remaining ingredients and simmer uncovered for 60-90 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally, until they have become reduced to a thick, syrupy consistency.
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