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Venice
February 2003

All The Real Girls
By Andrea Lita Rademan

Romance is in the air this month, and so is chocolate. And despite our obsession with diet, exercise, and grooming, we know that All the Real Girls crave the little eat in "bEAuTy."

… French restaurateur, Christine Splichal, of the Patina Group, has teamed with Yugoslavian skin expert, Olga Lorencin to create KINARA, a new day spa, café, and boutique with custom treatments, superb dining, and rarified shopping. California architect Hagy Belzberg, created the subtle East Indian-Balinese-French setting in warm earth tones splashed with oranges and reds.

Lorencin creates or customizes her own treatments and she was smart enough to enlist the advice of dermatologists and other doctors when creating her own products, which contain plenty of vitamin, antioxidant and herbal extracts. She gears her signature Kinara custom facial to each individual and not until you sit in her chair and she analyzes your skin does she decide what treatment is right for you. Then she custom blends her ingredients and chooses among deep pore cleansing, exfoliation, face-neck-shoulder massage, muscle firming, masks, antioxidant hand treatment and 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. Your skin may be fed Green Apple Cleansing Gel, Lemon Eucalyptus Hydrator and Nighttime Skin Quencher but as for real food, the delicious spa cuisine developed by Christine and her husband, Chef Joachim Splichal, for Kinara Café’s breakfasts, lunches, snacks and teas turns deprivation into indulgence: 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 wines and champagnes.

Splichal says, "This is food you can eat everyday." Don’t we wish. Lectures, seminars, and workshops on self-improvement are in the plans. Kinara Cadeaux is a boutique stocked with treasures Christine has gathered from Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Vietnam and Los Angeles. On your way out, treat yourself to a Maison Barnier (founded in 1930) French lollipop – they’re made of pure fruit and sugar in cherry, strawberry apple, lemon and orange.

Copyright 2003 • Venice