THE REAL COCONUT
Real Good Food.
GLUTEN, GRAIN & DAIRY FREE
Join us over on our blog where Daniella Hunter and The Real Coconut team share their recipes, healthy living hints & tips and digestive-health nutritional advice.
Our Products
Gluten & Grain Free Healthy Eats
Birthed at the original 'Real Coconut' restaurant in Tulum, Mexico, Daniella Hunter has created an exciting range of coconut-based snacks and wraps. The coconut flour tortilla chips and tortilla wraps are gluten free, grain free, dairy free and refined sugar free!
* 15% discount is applied once code has been entered at checkout. USA only. Offer ends 30th June 2018.
PLACES & SPACES
TULUM, MEXICO
Sanará meaning - ‘you will heal’ in Spanish, sits on the backdrop of one of the world’s most stunning beaches, looking out onto the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.
Visit the original Real Coconut at Sanará Tulum, to experience our menus and recipes, using sustainable food sources to promote digestive well-being.
Daniella's menus are GLUTEN, GRAIN, DAIRY, and REFINED SUGAR FREE.
Everything is homemade from scratch and wherever possible, organic and locally-sourced. We only cook with organic extra virgin coconut and avocado oil.
TRC @ Sanará Tulum - kitchen & bar open from 7:30am till 10pm everyday.
Founder & Menu Creator
Daniella Hunter is an authentic manifestation of her own individual tastes and health philosophy and The Real Coconut is an aesthetic of Daniella herself.
Having followed her own journey towards healing from severe asthma as a child, and a lifetime of poor health, Daniella delved into many different diet and cleanse programs to seek answers for a vital life, both for herself, and to share with others. Left a little less than satisfied, she formulated her own philosophy of digestive health and sustainability, both personally and for the planet. And so The Real Coconut, and it's plant-based recipe creation, was birthed.
Daniella lives between Tulum, Mexico and Santa Monica, California with her partner, Charlie, two sons, and dog, Milky. She has also taken on the role of director of the Belize Sustainable Development Corporation, helping guide the boutique farmers in multi cropping practices. She dedicates her free time to wildlife rehabilitation, and as a Co-Founder and Governor of the Tulum International School, providing a passion and inquiry-based curriculum to children in Tulum.
Latest Recipes & Journal
It was a bit of a surprise to some that we made the restaurant menu grain free (alongside gluten, dairy and refined sugar free), but to many it turned out to be a godsend. It could have proven controversial as we had also adopted a plant based eating foundation (to which you can add ethically sourced animal products), so when you remove grains and pulses, where do plant based eaters get there grounding and more carb based foods from. But it was an important point for us and something we strongly believed in and a challenge we were willing to meet. Thankfully, it’s proven worthwhile, according to a lot of our guests at least.
There is no denying that wellness is a serious business right now. There seems to have been a mass movement in the collective consciousness towards delving deeper into health and wellbeing. Old beliefs and paradigms are shifting and it looks like people are wanting more. More health, more balance, more joy, more meaning, more life…
Daniella Hunter has seized on a zeitgeist. With more and more growing demand for gluten, grain, and dairy free food on the rise globally — and with the gluten-free market alone projected to be valued at $2 billion by 2019 — Hunter is definitely on to something...
We have been committed to using digestible and sustainable grain free flours at The Real Coconut since the get go and we have three gluten free flours in particular that we love to use, all of which come from either a whole fruit or a vegetable.
Did you know that there are 4 vitamins that require fats or lipids in order to be digested properly? The fats are needed to transport the vitamins across the intestinal lining, into the bloodstream which then delivers them to the cells.
“I began experimenting with plantain flour at The Real Coconut in Tulum when developing a pancake recipe for the restaurant's breakfast menu, which then led to loads of other baked goodies, including cookies. The cookies have been so beloved by guests, and plantain flour is incredible from both a nutritional and environmental standpoint, that I had to find a way to bring them to the U.S.,” offers Daniella Hunter of The Real Coconut.
Due to increasingly unrealistic and unsustainable demands for cheap meat and dairy, something had to give. In order to supply a portion of the market with cheap meat, certain agricultural institutions started to modify the feeding and rearing practices of animals to make them more effective meat and dairy producers. Some animals are now fed on a processed feed which is high in grain, especially corn and soya, as it means that the cows can be fattened up quickly and cheaply. Grain breaks down into glucose which causes the animal to quickly gain weight. For dairy cows it also means that they have sufficient nutrients to keep producing milk throughout the Winter months when grass is lacking.
Coconut oil was an essential part of the discussion while we were dreaming up the concept and menu in the initial stages of The Real Coconut. Back in the days where the plan was a simple one: a cosy beach front cafe where you could get healthy, tasty nibbles for all the family. Little did we know it would become so much more and we see now how coconut oil was such a vital part of its success.
We haven’t actually talked about being dairy free on the blog yet, so it’s probably time to start talking because it was a very important part of the restaurant concept . As you may already know, all of our food and drink items are dairy free, with the small exception in our Tulum restaurant where we offer an organic cow’s milk option to have with the coffee selection.