Lake Austin Spa Resort Executive Chef Terry Conlan Pleases Diners With "Stealth Health" Cuisine

AUSTIN, TX - "Somebody once asked James Garner, the star of 'Maverick' and 'The Rockford Files', what the secret of acting was," muses chef Terry Conlan. "Garner replied, 'Don't let anybody catch you at it.' I guess you could say that's how I feel about cooking healthy food."

But acting, of course, is exactly what Garner does, and well. And healthy food is exactly what Conlan offers diners, as executive chef at the world-class Lake Austin Spa Resort - named #1 Destination Spa in North America by Condé Nast Traveler.

But don't call it "spa food". "That term carries a lot of connotations that aren't relevant to my cooking," says Conlan. "I just run a restaurant that happens to be in a spa. And I want our guests to have a great restaurant meal every time they sit down - a great restaurant meal with nothing bad in it." Call it stealth health.

Conlan took a roundabout journey to culinary mastery. Growing up in Dallas, he recalls, "Food was just fuel, and that was fine with me." He first came to Austin in the mid 1960s as an English major at the University of Texas. "I was just into having fun with no realistic plans for the future," he confesses. At one point, having fun meant moving into a big old house with four other guys, and that's when it happened: "Somebody had to cook," says Conlan, "and somehow that ended up being me. I fell in love with cooking almost immediately. I didn't know anything about food, but the whole process of thinking about it, shopping for it, and then preparing it just fascinated me."

Deciding that he didn't want to spend his life teaching English, Conlan left UT and, as he puts it, "pounded the streets for three months" in Austin looking for work. Then one day he happened into a big new restaurant called Marco's, New Orleans in style, which was opening against a deadline and which, says Conlan, "needed bodies". There he apprenticed under a 72-year-old African-American line chef who'd worked at the Driskill Hotel and then come out of retirement to cook at Marco's. "This was my first experience with real food," Conlan recalls, "and I learned a lot."

Conlan's next post was as chef at a small place called Galleria. "The only rule for the food was that it had to be vaguely European," he says. "I cooked a different six-course fixed-prix meal every night. To get ideas, I read probably every cookbook in the Austin library. I was like that teacher who's only about three weeks ahead of his class." Taking a break from the kitchen, Conlan went back to school, in a sense, working the front of the house at UT's first fine-dining venue for staff. Then he got seduced back into cooking as kitchen manager at a Mexican and Caribbean restaurant known as Tortuga's.

After a few years off "to be a parent", Conlan started looking for another cooking job - and got hired by Lake Austin Spa Resort. "It was a sleepy, quiet, inexpensive little spa at the time," he recalls. "The spa wisdom in those days was geared towards rapid weight loss, and the menus reflected that. The guests' expectations were so low. But I wanted to open the food up. Nobody used the term"spa food" at that point, and I didn't feel burdened by geography or history, so I realized that the food could be whatever I wanted it to be. I basically started cooking things I already knew how to do, things I liked to eat myself - clean, bright food, low in fat."

Slowly but surely, Conlan built a following. Fortunately, he says, when new owners took over the property in 1997 and began a major program of improvements and modernization, "They liked my cooking, and encouraged me to expand on what I was doing." By judiciously using ingredients like cream, butter, bacon, and cheese as accents rather than focal points and by limiting portion size, Conlan has been able to offer diners a wide variety of delights they might not have expected to find at a place with "spa" in its name.

Whether it's thin-crust pizza with tomato sauce and low-fat mozzarella, house-made smoked gouda pimento cheese sandwiches, or enchiladas verdes for lunch, or chilled melon soup with blue crab garnish, spaghetti with garlic, parmigiano, mushrooms and toasted bread crumbs, or citrus-crusted salmon with fennel slaw and a drizzle of sambuca cream for dinner, Conlan's creations are both virtuous and irresistibly delicious.

Part of the goodness (in both senses) of his food comes from the fact that he has developed local sources for most of his meats and produce, organic whenever possible, and uses a cornucopia of herbs and vegetables from the resort's organic garden. "This is an amazing time to be a chef," he says. "There are so many great ingredients available."

Conlan - who is the author of FRESH: Healthy Cooking and Living from Lake Austin Spa Resort (a finalist for the IACP 2004 Cookbook Awards in the Health/Special Diet category) and co-author of Lean Star Cuisine, and also a frequent contributor to such magazines as Cooking Light, Shape, and Prevention - enthusiastically shares his cooking philosophies and techniques. He teaches classes every month at the celebrated Central Market cooking schools in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston (he is said to have taught more Central Market classes than any other chef), and also oversees a popular Culinary Experienceâ„¢ week at Lake Austin Spa Resort, the second week of every month. Here, he shares teaching duties with such illustrious guest chefs as Frank Stitt, Giulio Hazan, and Sara Moulton, and offers wine and cheese tastings, outdoor breakfasts, and what he calls "all kinds of fun food-related things".

As both a teacher and a chef, though, Conlan's vision is clear. "I'm not interested in diets or gimmicky foods," he says. "I want to produce healthy, relatively low-fat, absolutely delicious meals that everyone will enjoy eating on a long-term basis. Not 'spa food' - just good food, period."

ABOUT LAKE AUSTIN SPA RESORT

Nestled along the shores of scenic Lake Austin in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, Lake Austin Spa Resort offers guests the sanctuary of a world-class spa and the warmth of a best friend's lake house. Lake Austin Spa Resort offers all-inclusive vacation packages, which include accommodations in one of 40 charming lakeside guest rooms, three gourmet meals daily, indoor and outdoor fitness activities and classes, and a selection of spa and body treatments.

The resort has received numerous awards from prestigious national travel and spa magazines since its multi-million dollar renovation and expansion in 2004. Cond é Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Allure, the Zagat Survey, Health, Garden Design, SpaFinder Lifestyle, Spa Magazine and American Airlines' Celebrated Living magazine have recently honored Lake Austin Spa Resort as one of the best in the country and in the world.

For additional information and reservations, call 800-847-5637, or visit www.lakeaustin.com.