‘High-quality throughout’: how this Thai luxury hotel farms its own food, from eggs and bacon to bananas and mushrooms
- The Conrad Koh Samui in Thailand has created its own farm, producing vegetables fed with compost from food waste, and more than 10,000 chicken and duck eggs monthly
- Also in-house are a mushroom farm, a hydroponic set-up, and a butcher, and the hotel even smokes its own salmon and cures its own meat
When on holiday, fresh eggs cooked to order, creamy yogurt, delicate smoked salmon and crispy bacon are some of the breakfast ingredients most travellers have come to expect from the average luxury resort.
But it certainly adds another dimension to the indulgence to discover that most, if not all of this food has been grown or made at the resort. Being offered freshly laid duck eggs at the egg station is often the first indication that, at the Conrad Koh Samui, there is more to the food than the mass-procured fare typically served by a large hotel group.
While the five-star resort located on this idyllic Thai island does not describe itself as a farm-to-table destination, it has – during the pandemic years – transformed into a culinary outlier in the world of hospitality.
It is home to a sprawling 8,000 sq m (1.8-acre) farm, which produces some 1,300kg (2,866lbs) of fruit and vegetables, as well as 6,000 chicken eggs and 4,500 duck eggs every month for the resort’s restaurants and bars.
To date, only a smattering of other resorts in the region, including Buahan, A Banyan Tree Escape and The Residence Bintan, both in Indonesia, and The Farm at San Benito, in the Philippines, have ventured into their own on-site farms. Conrad Koh Samui’s is said to be one of the largest hotel-managed organic farms in Southeast Asia.
