Amilla Maldives launches series of sustainability initiatives 

Amilla Maldives Resort & Residences has unveiled a series of sustainable and environmentally conscious F&B initiatives.

The new concepts seek to revolutionise the culinary experience at the resort, embodying Amilla’s reinvention as a champion for ‘conscious luxury’, sustainability and resourcefulness.

The process was instigated over a year ago with the appointment of its dedicated Sustainability Manager Victoria Kruse, and was rapidly accelerated by the pandemic-enforced period of closure.

Underpinning Amilla Maldives’ new garden-to-table philosophy, Homemade@Amilla and Homegrown@Amilla is the resort’s commitment to providing as much fresh, nutritional island-grown produce as possible. Previously overlooked indigenous ingredients are now celebrated alongside the homemade, homegrown and homebrewed, bringing added vigour to immunity-boosting menus.

Homegrown@Amilla harnesses the 58-acre natural island’s green spaces; countless enclaves carefully tended, planted and cultivated to become the cornerstone of Amilla’s food and beverage offering. Fruit trees, a mushroom hut and a sweet potato garden are complemented by an organic hydroponic garden comprising herbs, salads, micro-greens, edible flowers, and superfoods such as moringa, purslane and Abelmoschus manihot, as well as Maldivian rocket.

At Cluckingham Palace, 60 hens provide all the fresh eggs needed for the resort kitchens and after investing in a coconut press, Amilla is also now making the most of its 2,000 coconut trees – a renewable resource producing fresh coconut water and coconut milk, dried coconut flour and high-quality coconut oil.

In parallel, Homemade@Amilla is testament to creativity and self-production and has been introduced to reduce Amilla’s food mileage and packaging use, while creating an interactive and informative experience for guests.

Using simple, low-tech processes that can be easily replicated in guests’ own kitchens, organic produce from Amilla’s gardens is transformed into nutritious, immunity-boosting superfoods, from Kimchi, fresh bread and sourdough to nut butters, ricotta and vegan cheese.

Homemade drinks include beer made from waste pineapple skins and offcuts, tepache, tonic water and bitters to signature probiotic sodas such as fresh ginger and lemon peel earl grey kombucha; Screwpine soda, made from the fruit of the pandana trees that cloak the island interior; or ‘living lemonade’ which is lacto-fermented with whey – itself a by-product of Amilla’s homemade yoghurt.

As well as showcasing simple home production methods like fermentation, these products enlivened the resort’s restaurant and bar menus.

Amilla Maldives dining options span Japanese fusion dishes at award-winning restaurant Feeling Koi, spicy Thai specialities, fiery Indian treats and Indonesian temptations at Wok, and a number of beach bar concepts.

The newly created Living Cocktails menu includes signatures such as Limonade, featuring vodka and limoncello, finished with a splash of homemade green tea kombucha; Old Spice made from rum and spice bitters, topped with homemade ginger beer; and O-Margarita featuring tequila shaken with homemade orange shrub and lime juice, topped with earl grey kombucha.

A newly installed copper alembic will also be distilling essential oils and hydrosols using produce grown in the resort’s gardens, or ingredients such as orange peel that would otherwise be discarded.