Where Does Our Food Come From?

One of the things that we spend a lot of time discussing on this blog is food.  Perhaps it’s because of the many great restaurants available on our resort (or perhaps it is because I am a total foodie and find any excuse I can to talk about food), but it’s a subject near and dear to our hearts at PUNTACANA. 

While we’ve talked about the resort’s restaurants, chefs, and even a gastronomic tour before, we have never taken the time to really talk about the most important issue:  where does all of this food come from?

The answer to this question is surprisingly complicated. Puntacana does not receive much rainfall relative to the amount of agriculture we manage to produce.  As a result, it is much more difficult to sustainably grow fruits and vegetables than it is in other regions.  For one thing, the native soil is quite difficult to grow substantial numbers of fruits and vegetables.  It is hard, if not impossible, to grow the amount of food that we need to sustain our guests and ourselves at our resort.  We do, however, have a way of enriching the soil and producing fruits and vegetables that we normally might have to miss out on - composting. 

He's an info graphic to help you better understand

The compost program is something you can see for yourself at the Indigenous Eyes Ecological Park and Reserve (for those of you keeping track at home this is also one of the places you can see the endangered Ridgway’s Hawk as well).  In fact, your tour of the park will allow you to get your hands a little dirty with the compost if you so desire.  While most of the people I tell to get their hands dirty and get involved recoil in horror when the words “aerated organic waste” come up, most people are also very happy to eat some of the delicious food that is produced using this method to enrich the soil.

Furthermore, all of the produce in our restaurants is a direct result of the compost project, which means that any meal you eat in our restaurant will have its fruits and vegetables harvested from a sustainable soil. In fact, Westin Hotels & Resorts views our composting efforts as literally a “natural fit” for their Westin’s SuperFoodsRx Program which you can enjoy while dining at Puntacana Resort & Club.

And, while the guests in our restaurants are lucky enough to enjoy some of the best produce on the island, residents of our Estates get the star treatment and can have this produce delivered directly to their homes. No matter how you get it, the food is delicious and sustainable - our way of insuring a commitment to luxury and environmentalism.  

No matter how you encounter the produce at Puntacana, I hope you will take a moment to appreciate the amount of work that goes into each and every fruit and vegetable that makes its way onto your plate.  While the environment may not naturally encourage us to grow the gardens that we do, we can fix that with a bit if ingenuity and a whole lot of hard work.