Four Seasons Spa Houston

The Four Seasons is one of Houston’s premiere hotels located near all the downtown happenings of the Toyota Center, House of Blues and Green Street. As of late, there is a lot of construction in this area. From new hotels like the Marriott set to have a Texas shaped lazy river, to street upgrades and remodels like the one at the Four Seasons. I was invited out along with my Houston Food Blogger Collective friends to visit the new upgraded spa and to check out the spa menu! While waiting at the lobby bar, the bartender told me that the bar was also set for some upgrades. With stiff competition coming soon and the upcoming Super Bowl, seems to me that the Four Seasons is ready to make some big changes!

The Spa:

To start the event, I took a staff led tour with my buddy Renia from Gristle and Gossip. The spa was serene and smelled marvelous as any spa. There is a room for single massages and of course a room for couples. Next we stepped into the women’s locker room. It had all the fixings of what you would expect from the Four Seasons Spa. Plush robes, a sauna, technologically advanced lockers without the old school locks and of course all the lotions and soaps you could ever need. I tried on the robe and glided through the room like Queen Latifah in Last Holiday. Unfortunately I could only be rich for a few minutes :(.

Nail Salon

Nail Salon part 2

Massage Room

Up next was the gym area which has all new equipment and let me tell you it is FANCY. I hopped on the elliptical for a second and ohhh and ahhed at the social media features. Forget monitoring your heart rate and distance, you can tweet while you workout! Then they offer Smart Water for guests as needed in the gym. That’s the good stuff. Before heading to the pool, we stopped over to the nail salon. It was closed for the moment but REALLY beautiful. One thing I liked about the whole spa is that it only can accommodate a few people at a time. This adds to the luxury feel because you are not being paraded through locker rooms with hoards of people like a public pool.

The Food:

We ended the tour at the pool where our tasting was to be held. As of late, Houston weather can be pretty unpredictable. Of course it sprinkled on and off, but for the most part did not ruin the fun. Since I am the black girl from Mean Girls who screams “MY HAIR” whenever there is rain, I kept my umbrella at the ready for the few drizzles.

For our tasting, we were treated to several courses of the Spa menu. As it the name would imply, the Spa menu offers light and healthier options that are fitting for someone who just finished a workout or had a relaxing massage. First up was a trio of salads, the southwest healthy smoked chicken and quinoa salad, spinach & chayote squash salad and the Signature Power Bowl. The staff was gracious enough to bring out the entrée as it would be served to visitors and a small sampler plate for us. I enjoyed all of the salads I truly did, but the chicken and quinoa salad stole my heart. In my experience quinoa is rather bland. In this case, the smoky flavor from the chicken carried over to the rest of the salad especially the quinoa. A truly amazing salad.

For entrees, we enjoyed the tandoori ginger chicken, grilled verlasso salmon with cilantro sauce, bulgur & mushroom burger and southwest turkey wrap. I overdid it on my favorite salad so once I saw the full entrees I was only able to nibble. Of these options though, my favorites were the salmon and the chicken. For the salmon, the cilantro sauce gave it the kick I needed. With the chicken, the curry was apparent in the flavor and the color.

At the end the chef said it was the dessert course. I of course get excited because I have a sweet tooth! They then brought out these beautiful dishes of fruit and oatmeal, because this is the healthy SPA Menu. My mind heard dessert and now I needed something super sweet and unhealthy so I swung by Dessert Gallery on the way home, but I admittedly have a problem! Everyone else around me, with much more mature palates than me, loved it and thought it fit in very well with the healthy feast we had. Trust them in this instance!