JOEL & AISTE GAZDAR

Joel and Aiste Gazdar are wellbeing pioneers, conscious entrepreneurs and plant-based alchemists leading a movement of transforming humanity’s relationship with food. They are authors of the innovative plant based and wellbeing book “WILD: Plant Based Recipes & Rituals to Nourish your Wild Essence” (Penguin, Random House 2019).

In 2011 they founded their first Wild Food Cafe in London, UK as a culmination of their work and long-term interest in integral practices of nourishment and wellbeing. It has grown to become an iconic oasis of a new generation of delicious, innovative and nourishing raw-centric plant-based food in the centre of the city: a beacon of community, wellness and innovation. Wild Food Cafe has received numerous accolades for its culinary achievements, creativity and commitment to quality and seasonality by local and international media including BBC, CNN, The Evening Standard, Huffington Post and others; and has been recently voted as the best raw food restaurant in the world by American Express; featured among top 5 plant-based Paleo restaurants in London by Vogue, and among 9 best vegetarian restaurants by The Handbook.

Since then Joel and Aiste have been instrumental in crafting the recipes of Wild Food Cafe, leading the team of professional plant-based chefs and hospitality experts and building an online and offline community of the wild wellbeing tribe. Alongside this, for the last 9 years they have been guiding thousands of students from all over the world into upgrading their plant-food skillsets in the practical raw food and wellbeing immersions, retreats, training courses, cleanses and workshops. Combined, they have over 35 years of personal and professional experience in integral practices of wellbeing, including multiple modalities of plant-food, herbalism, nutrition, cleansing, astrology, yoga and other holistic movement and personal development practices. Their inter-disciplinary training brings a wealth of knowledge and a sense of all-inclusivity, playfulness, ease and integration of varying (complementary, although at times seemingly contradictory) approaches to nourishment and wellness.

Joel & Aiste are students of Maestro Manuel Rufino and have been fortunate enough to travel in all four directions and have been apprenticed to many traditional peoples of knowledge from different cultures of the world, from Ayurveda in India, Tibetan and traditional Chinese medicine, European herbalism, African herbalism and the global shamanic cornucopia and plant medicines of South and North America.