Founders
Joel & Aiste
Joel and Aiste Gazdar are wellbeing pioneers, community magnetisers, conscious entrepreneurs and full spectrum alchemists leading a movement of transforming humanity’s relationship with nature, food, and ultimately, themselves. 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. They have 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 many others. Since then Joel and Aiste have been instrumental in building an online and offline community, holding group and individual spaces of paradise and transformation, and guiding thousands of students from all over the world into upgrading their plant-food skill sets in the practical raw food and wellbeing immersions, retreats, training courses, cleanses and workshops.
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“Neal’s Yard’s raw-centric vegetarian and vegan cafe provides delicious plant-based cuisine and superfood smoothies – not to mention the best raw veggie burger in town.”
“Everyone knows it makes sense that we align ourselves with nature and the ecosystem.”
“Joel Gazdar turned his attention from a career in architecture to focus on his passion of making raw and organic dishes at his London restaurant.”
“It’s so easy to make it fun, making it beautiful, making it sound beautiful, making it feel appealing, putting the joy in there, having all these great ingredients to work with that are so colourful.”
To heal the environment one must first heal the environmentalist
Thich Nhat Hanh
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 unravelling our potential and thriving.
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.
