The Orlando Sentinel says...

I'm sitting with my feet poised above a bowl swarming with hungry fish. I'm told they are harmless garra rufa fish, toothless and gentle.But I'm thinking piranha.I'm thinking wading into the ocean when the water is murky, and stepping on something slithery. I'm not so sure I want these garra rufas nibbling on my toes. But that is why I'm here at The Spa in Orlando's Ivanhoe Village. I'm here to sample the hottest trend in spa treatments: fish pedicures.

These silvery, inch-long garra rufas -- also known as doctor fish -- are about to give my feet a most unusual treatment. So, blocking out visions of a feeding frenzy, I take the plunge. Actually, it's more of a dip. After my feet have been thoroughly washed, I slip them gingerly into the bowl of warm water and hold still, as instructed. The doctor fish attack! Just kidding. The critters have impeccable bedside -- bowlside? -- manners. Their nibbling is purposeful but delicate.

It tickles. It tingles. But ever so slightly. It is a little creepy, but only at first.

I relax into my comfortable massage chair and let the fish chow down. Garra rufas are a type of carp native to Turkey. They have a taste for dead skin cells, but spa owner Andy Swart also feeds his regular fish food. He keeps them in a large tank filled with 81-degree water. When a client wants her piggies pampered, he nets about 100 fish and transfers them to a blue plastic pedicure bowl. Working conditions are pretty cushy. In addition to providing his tiny workers with free board and lodging, Swart has them on a rotating schedule -- one day on, one day off.


The fish use their lips to gently exfoliate the feet -- a process usually done with pumice stones or razors. As they nibble, the doctor fish secrete enzymes that help soften the skin. In some Turkish spas, they are even used to treat conditions such as eczema and psoriasis.

Introduced into northern Virginia earlier this year, the novelty pedicures were an instant hit. Soon, women across the country were clamoring for appointments with the scaly little doctors. Swart brought the first garra rufas to Central Florida in mid-September.


After 15 minutes, the fishy part of my pedicure is over. My feet feel amazing. The skin has that smooth, plumped-up feeling you get when you apply moisturizer after a hot shower.

Now it's time for a human pedicurist to buff and polish my toenails -- an operation the doctor fish have not yet mastered.

What's it like to have a fish pedicure? See for yourself at Orlando Sentinel.com/fishpedicure.

Jean Patteson can be reached at jpatteson@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5158.

The Orlando Weekly says...

So this is what it’s all come down to. The plate tectonics of our oversized socioeconomic structure have screeched and scratched against each other one too many times, pressing hairline fractures into gaping voids and smashing the jagged slabs of our seemingly solid foundations willy-nilly across the arid landscape. Ah, the revolution! Let’s just eat the rich and get on with it, OK? “So, are you here to try the fish pedicure?” an angular smile belonging to Andy, the owner of Orange Avenue’s starkly named Spa beams, then frowns. “Can I get you a drink?”

Jessica and I have somehow winnowed our way into a minnow experience that is set to be the distillation of a national aesthetic trend that has already passed through the lips of Tyra Banks too many times to matter. Jessica, whose head frequently drifts somewhere in the lifestyle-mag aesthetosphere, is already way too hip to this ectothermic exploitation of aquaculture to betray even the least bit of surprise. But for me, still amazed by the dynamics of the Hot Pocket, it all seems a little surreal.
“In what way will this be any different than that feeling of repulsion I used to get when my toes became food for shiners in late-’70s Naple s beach vacations?” I nervously giggle some rhetoric. “Moreover, will it veer into that young-backpackers-at-summer-camp, post-Vietnam War-science-of-1978 territory so terrifying in the screen adaptation of Piranha?”
“This is beauty,” Jessica’s face elongates to display teeth. “There is no such thing as too much beauty.”

In a fit of marketing genius or desperation, the Spa has employed marketing consultants to smash the champagne bottle on their latest body-altering endeavor with a “media event.” The idea is to get all of the prettiest journalistas into a room and lavish them with liquor and up-and-down glances, all in the hopes that they’ll take their smooth-as-a-baby’s-bottom feet back to their Carrie Bradshaw laptops and spread the good word of fish therapy. (You, too, can take part in this experience on Fridays for a mere $30, ahem, and this is the only place in Florida to do it!)

There are a couple of girls from the Sentinel here, somebody from Florida Trend and a few other marketing types milling about. In a deft act of mood suspension, there are cocktails featuring Red Bull, vodka, and orange and grapefruit juice – or “jackass mimosas,” a term coined by Jessica’s less-frilly half, Matt – and there is new age music. And in case none of this is quite enough to replicate the apocalypse in my head, there are also giant shards of stone scattered everywhere, because for these Friday happy hour events, the fish bits are taken care of in the adjoining giant stone shard shop. It does not get any better than this.
“So who’s first?” a nice pedicurist named Theresa toes over.
I push Jessica into the water and pretend to scream for help.
“So, um, how do you know that this won’t spread fungus or disease?” she voices the entire room’s suspicions.

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