“As long as I have a heat source, I can cook,” chef Shon Foster told me as we sat 5,200 feet atop Tower Butte looking out to the sprawling Arizona desert. We’d just finished up a grilled brunch—banana bread french toast, rabbit, and rattlesnake sausage with salmon rillette—courtesy of the native Utah chef on the sandstone summit that required a helicopter landing. Still, Foster, who operates as a culinary consultant for luxury experiences in remote locations, doesn’t consider this the wildest place he’s curated a meal. In recent years, he’s traveled with EXP Journeys to sate guests by whipping up guanacan stew on the side of a Patagonian glacier, or roasting a whole hog in the midst of Fort Charlotte in the Bahamas. 

In such far-flung places, “you have to come to terms with the idea that you might not have a certain ingredient,” says Foster, “and what you can do to substitute for it or completely think outside the box.” This is a hard-earned lesson from working at Amangiri, the boutique resort in the canyons of Utah, where the chef sourced from three local farmers and gardeners solely for the kitchen’s produce, plus two egg farmers. He says this is what cooking at such resorts is all about—relationships and persistence; finding local farmers and starting to grow your own food. 

As travelers seek more singular experiences in off-grid destinations, new and enduring remote lodges are reimagining their meals. Even though their outlying positions can present challenges like road closures, weather disruptions, and maintaining a reliable cold chain for perishable foods, these lodges don’t consider their setting a disadvantage.

“Having full availability has an ironic tendency to stagnate creativity,” says Sunny Jin, managing director of culinary operations for Paws Up Montana. Jin and his team source “in a spiral”—not unlike Three Camel Lodge in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, some 5,500 miles away. “We begin with what we can obtain in the Gobi itself, then from the nearest provincial town about 40 miles away, and finally from Ulaanbaatar, located roughly 410 miles from the lodge,” says general manager Buyantogtokh Munkhbayar. Respectively, this includes an onsite greenhouse and milk from local herding families to prepare their own yogurt, while mushrooms and broccoli come from Ulaanbaatar for soups and side dishes.

This is a theme among isolated resorts: source local whenever possible, starting with hyper local, and only import ingredients that can withstand transport—or limit imports altogether. “We intentionally avoid serving seafood, as it is almost entirely imported,” says Munkhbayar. At Wild Coast Tented Lodge, a Relais & Châteaux property in Sri Lanka known for presenting traditional flavors in the middle of Yala National Park, imports are “carefully chosen” to complement the local produce, says executive chef Gunendra Pushpasiri. Think: beef and lamb from Australia, and Asian condiments like miso, wasabi, and soy sauce from Japan. The remaining 85 percent of their ingredients are sourced from around the island, including vegetables purchased, and arriving daily, directly from Tissamaharama.

Some of these lodges have the benefit of fertile lands and untouched surroundings that can yield a balanced menu just from their property, or at least within 80 miles. In fact, Isabella Macdonald, owner of Kinloch Lodge on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, says sourcing quality produce is relatively “easy” given their juxtaposition between unpolluted waters, the Scottish Highlands, and the lodge’s own backyard. “Our chefs forage for their own mushrooms, brambles, hazelnuts, sea herbs [and] we grow most of our own salad leaves and herbs,” says Macdonald. This is supplemented by three weekly fish and shellfish deliveries and four meat deliveries (Highland beef, Ayrshire lamb, and Perthshire chicken). The readily available resources make it possible for Kinloch Lodge to offer a menu that changes daily—something Macdonald says her parents struggled with when they opened the lodge 50 years ago.

Yet, even when relying on hyper-local deliveries, problems can arise. “The unpredictable weather here can put everything on hold, which means supply chains can break down overnight,” says Calum Montgomery, chef-owner of Edinbane Lodge about an hour north of Kinloch, where 85 percent of their ingredients are sourced from Skye and the Highlands. Availability can change quickly if a local fisherman can’t get out to sea because of strong winds, but that’s where relationships build the menu’s resilience. Montgomery has fostered close ties with fishermen on both sides of the island. “If one coast is too rough, the other is often sheltered, and a quick call can mean the difference between losing a dish and serving it at its very best.” Montgomery also uses traditional preservation methods like curing, smoking, and pickling to ensure a full larder of preserves and ferment that permit Edinbane to celebrate Skye produce year-round, even when fresh supply is disrupted.

Many remote lodges, however, are stunted by unfixable geographic challenges, like infertile land. Still, they prioritize sourcing from other parts of their respective countries; such is the case at Awasi Patagonia in Chile’s rugged Torres del Paine. The Magallanes region is ideal for proteins like guanaco, hare, crab, and hake, yet it’s too cold to grow fruits and vegetables. Chef Marco Salinas sources these from northern Chile—but that’s still more than 1,800 miles away. “The biggest challenges are finding the right balance in supply to avoid both shortages and overstock,” he says. This requires immense planning, usually months in advance as Salinas collaborates with northern farmers based on projections of the forthcoming season. “Meat works in a similar way: during the off-season I coordinate with suppliers to secure stock, specifying cuts and quantities,” he shares. 

In Tanzania’s Serengeti, Wilderness Usawa faces a similar obstacle; most of their weekly fresh food deliveries and twice-weekly dry goods arrive from Arusha, 200 miles away. “Even on a good day, trucks take around 10 hours to reach camp due to poor roads and the speed restrictions in the reserve,” says their food experience manager, Cecila Briggs. This can pose problems with food freshness so “instead of importing or forcing availability” the team’s adapted their menu to focus on ingredients that are more resilient for the long journey and warm conditions, including pumpkin, green banana, and root crops. “We avoid ingredients that are consistently unreliable,” says Briggs, such as avocados and certain seasonal fruit. 

What about destinations at high altitude? At more than 6,000 feet above sea level, Cabane Tortin in Verbier, Switzerland, receives pre-season deliveries via helicopter and mid-season stocks via snowcat. Their chefs also need to accommodate water boiling at lower temperatures, doughs rising faster, and flavors presenting themselves in more subtle ways in the thinner mountain air, explains their director, Tobias. Whether perfecting a light, airy meringue or coaxing depth and warmth out of a slow-simmered Valais lamb stew, “our chefs adjust techniques and cooking times to honor these alpine conditions,” he says.

All of a sudden, cutting into a pork chop during a desert picnic or forking a salad in the Inner Hebrides offers more value. “With the modern age you can get whatever you want in a FedEx box,” says Foster, “but if you want to get really good stuff, it comes back to knowing the boat that catches your fish, the farmer raising the chickens, and the rancher that raises your beef.”