... a chocolate wrap. Not the cellophane kind around confectionary, but an indulgent spa treatment that will make you smell good enough to eat. If you're looking for a special gift for your favourite foodie, then delicious. has just found it.
It seems that in fashionable circles these days the archaic notion of just eating chocolate has become outmoded. Now it's de rigeur to have it painted all over your body to relax you and nourish your skin. Curious to know more (like how much of it you get to eat before you have to wash it off), web editor Debra Waters visited the May Fair Spa.
It's not every day you get the opportunity to cover yourself in a product normally reserved for consumption, but the chic May Fair Hotel in London's Green Park offers exactly that.
Enter the hotel's low-lit underground spa with its jet black decor, tinkling waterfalls, and golden Buddha statues, and within minutes the calming atmosphere is working its magic. But this spa, with its friendly and professional staff, offers more than just your average treatments.
You are what you eat if you take one of the spa's new offerings. There are three chocolate treatments – The Chocolate Body Wrap (£99, 60 mins), The Chocolate Steam Bath for Two (£99, 45 mins) and the Chocolate Steam Bath for One (£70, 45 mins). All use pure, organic 100% cocoa to moisturise the skin.
He's clearly tried it
After a sauna and aromatic steam room session to prime the skin, followed by a lie down in the darkened chill-out room, a gentle salt scrub was applied to exfoliate my skin, and washed off. Then, like an oversized cake, I was covered from neck to ankles in melted chocolate. After being wrapped in a heavy heated blanket, I was given a spine-tingling scalp massage, and left alone to ponder bliss.
If you're of an inquisitive, peckish nature, then this is the moment when you'll try the chocolate. But chocoholics beware – pure cocoa doesn't contain fat or sugar, so although it smells of hot puds it doesn't taste like those exquisite treats; in fact, it's bitter enough to bring tears to your eyes.
After this spa faux pas (it's not generally the done thing to taste the products), I showered off the chocolate – not an easy task, given the sticky texture of melted cocoa – then was smothered in Cocoa Dream Body Oil. After almost two hours of being steamed, scrubbed, smothered and showered I was so chocolatey you could have put a coloured ribbon in my hair and placed me in a Prestat window display.
If you have someone in your life (indeed, if you are that someone in your life) that loves the sensual aroma of chocolate and the stress-relieving effects of being pampered from head to toe, then the May Fair Spa offers treatments that cannily combine the two. For die-hard foodiephiles, The May Fair also offers cellulite-banishing green coffee and tropical yogurt treatments.
Click here to visit the May Fair Spa
May Fair Spa, Radisson Edwardian May Fair Hotel, Stratton Street, London, W1J 8LTT: 0207 915 2826. Email