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Beverly Hills Weekly
February 6-12, 2003

Sitting Pretty for Valentine’s Day?
Here are some places that put a little eat in "bEAuTy"

By Andrea Rademan

If you haven’t been to Robertson Boulevard lately, you may not recognize it. One of the newest additions to this budding fashion and beauty row is Kinara, a new day spa, café and boutique that offers custom treatments, superb dining and rarified shopping. Architect Hagy Belzberg created a subtle East Indian-Balinese-French setting in warm earth tones splashed with oranges and reds. It’s the brainchild of French restaurateur, Christine Splichal, of the Patina Group, and Yugoslavian skin care expert, Olga Lorencin. Lorencin creates or customizes her own treatments and she enlisted the advice of dermatologists and other doctors when creating her own vitamin, antioxidant and herbal extract-based products. With her signature Kinara custom facial, she analyzes your skin, then custom blends her ingredients and does whatever she thinks you need: deep pore cleansing, exfoliation, face, neck or shoulder massages, muscle firming, masks, antioxidant hand care and/or moisturizer. The Kinara VIP Facial adds a hand and foot mask and a dry scalp massage. Other massages are available, too, as are baths, scrubs, wrap, medical treatments with a dermatologist, and more.

Kinara Café’s delicious spa cuisine was developed by Christine and her noted chef husband, Joachim Splichal. Served for breakfasts, lunches, snacks and teas: brioche with marmalade, roasted baby beets and Humboldt Fog goat cheese salad, Scottish smoked salmon with crème fraiche and lemon crab tea sandwiches, chocolate cake, panna cotta, truffles and even a few of Christine’s favorite wines and champagnes, turns deprivation into indulgence. Splichal says matter-of-factly, "This is food you can eat everyday." If only.

If you’re still hungry after stocking up at Kinara Cadeaux on some of the gorgeous sleepwear, decorative items and such that Christine hauled back from Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Vietnam and even found right here at home, suck up to a Maison Barnier French lollipop, made of pure sugared cherry, strawberry apple, lemon and orange since 1930.

Copyright 2003 • Beverly Hills Weekly