At Top Golf Resorts, the Kitchen Is Now as Big a Star as the Course

Scorecard in hand, I walk toward the 15th green; from the teahouse comes the smell of a Korean pancake. That one smell is enough to prove the old idea of golf-club food is dead. There was a time when a hot dog at the turn and a burger in the clubhouse were the ceiling; soups were thick enough to make a spoon stand up. That era is over. In GOLF magazine's Top 100 Resorts list, the kitchen now carries as much weight as the course. When I cover tournaments, I read the menu as carefully as the scorecard. A golfer's performance depends heavily on what he eats and when across 18 holes. My job is to decode injuries; food enters the picture long before the breakdown. When blood sugar drops on the 15th, the swing mechanism collapses. So a frozen persimmon after 15 is not just a treat; it is performance. Golf resorts used to mean beautiful greens and a clubhouse; food was a side note. That equation has changed. Chefs trained at the world's best tables now serve multi-course tasting menus to trattoria classics beside golf courses. Each restaurant has its own personality and sense of place. From that list, here are five dining experiences. First: a coastal resort in South Korea. Teahouses are part of the course. One after the 5th, another after the 15th. The first serves tea and artisan chocolates; the second serves frozen persimmon. Skipping that persimmon means ignoring resort tradition. Dinner is in a clubhouse framed by sea cliffs, with Namhae beef—Korea's answer to Kobe—at the centre of the menu. Keep score if you like, but do not count calories. Second: Terre Blanche, Provence. The word Provence is a taste. Its three restaurants show three sides of the region: vegetables picked that morning, herbs grown beside the kitchen, seafood from the Mediterranean. Lunch is casual and sun-splashed; dinner is polished. Sustainability and hyper-locality run through both. Linger over a bottle of something Provençal. Third: Costa Navarino, Greece. Golf is still finding its footing there, but the dining is already worthy of the gods. Flame is classic steakhouse, Da Luigi is Italian, Onuki is spot-on Japanese. For Greek food, Armyra or Barbouni—Barbouni is almost at the water's edge. Beyond the property, farm stands and olive groves stretch to the horizon. Fourth: Ristorante Campo del Drago, Tuscany. The restaurant now holds two Michelin stars under chef Matteo Temperini. The menu pairs produce from the resort's organic gardens with the estate's Brunello di Montalcino. Tuscany's story of food, vines and history sits on one table. Fifth: Osteria La Canonica, on the same estate. This is the lower-key classic trattoria: wood-fired pizza, Chianina steaks, simple sublime pasta. The full range of Tuscan cooking lives between those two places; guests never have to leave the 12th-century borgo. Here is the contrarian lesson. Does a Michelin star mean the best golf food? Not always. Campo del Drago is superb, but the soul of golf dining is the teahouse after the 5th, where there is no scorecard pressure. Fine-dining's rise can be a cost problem for smaller courses. Terre Blanche shows that the garden next door, not the imported ingredient, creates the star. Local ingredients mean less cost and more taste. The standard of a golf resort is now measured in two places—the greens and the grill, the course and the kitchen. A country that thinks only about courses will discover a new competitive layer when it starts thinking about menus. The game does not end after 18 holes; it ends at the dinner table.