Food for the sole

The natural reaction to the mention of chocolate pedicures?

What a waste of good chocolate.

So I make an appointment, fully expecting a treatment I'd rather eat than wear on my feet.

Chocolate pedicures, it turns out, are one of several signature services on the menu at L.A. Styles Salon and Day Spa in Dunlap, Ill.
There's also the chocolate layered facial, a chocolate scrub that includes a 30-minute massage and the slimming (so they say) chocolate mousse body wrap.

In the champagne facial, the beautifying properties of grapes and champagne oil are supposed to help fade age spots. During the stone therapy massage, a masseuse rubs hot stones on your back. Several of the women who work here swear by the margarita manicure.

"Anything with lime is really exfoliating," explains Lisa Abraham, the L.A. of L.A. Styles. Not to mention the foliating properties of the real margarita that comes with each manicure.

L.A. Styles was merely a hair salon when Abraham opened it 12 years ago. Now Abraham, a busy mother of five, oversees 30 stylists, all of them cross-trained to do hair and spa treatments, plus a reflexologist and a skin-care specialist.

Abraham branched off into the signature spa services five years ago. "We wanted something people would know us by," she says.

That's why they call them "signature" services, as opposed to, say, edible services.

"Can I get you a glass of wine?" Meagan Witter asks as I settle into a high, creamy leather pedicure chair.

Witter has just given a whirlwind tour of L.A. Styles:

The coloring room, where special steam processors color hair in half the time; the toilet stall-sized sauna; the makeup room where they can air-brush eye shadow, blush and foundation right on your face; softly lit massage rooms; the bridal lounge, where the bridal party can lounge and eat during a half-day or day of beauty treatments; the manicure room; and, finally, the pedicure room, where four matching cream-colored leather chairs line brick-red walls.

REALM OF THE PEDICURE QUEEN

They call Witter the pedicure queen here. A good pedicure is supposed to last two months. At most, a woman (or a man) might get 10 or 12 pedicures a year. She does 300 a year, more than the rest of the salon combined.

While my feet soak in a bubbling bath of chocolate-flavored mineral salts, she tells me a little about her personal history.

At 20, she's been a licensed cosmetologist for 2 1/2 years. She graduated from Peoria (Ill.) School District 150's defunct cosmetology co-op program, which was based at Trewyn Middle School on Peoria's far south side. She came to L.A. Styles as a receptionist and worked her way up to stylist before she became known as the pedicure queen.

She's as cheery removing old polish as she is pouring chocolate-smelling mineral salts in the foot bath.

"I never planned on being the pedicure queen," she says.

"But I think it's pretty cool to be almost 21 and already have my licensing. My parents weren't so sure about me going to Trewyn and all, but I've known this was what I wanted since my first Barbie doll."

GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT?

All through the process, Witter tells me how rejuvenating each chocolate-smelling beauty product is.

"You're going to want to eat your own feet," another pedicurist, Marti Couri, chimes.

Witter rubs my feet and calves with a grainy chocolate-based scrub, which is supposed to slough dead skin cells away.

"Wait until you feel how soft your legs are after just this one step," she says.

Witter rinses the scrub off, then prepares the chocolate mousse mask while my feet soak.

She paints the warm chocolate batter up and down by legs and feet with a real paintbrush, explaining how it tightens the skin. She also tells me about the time she got a little of the mask on her hand and inadvertently licked it off.

How'd it taste?

"Not good."

Once my legs are slathered in the not-for-tasting chocolate mousse mask, she turns the lights down to a warm glow and leaves me to relax while the mask works.

After about 15 minutes, my feet look like dried mud. Witter rinses the "mud" off, then starts to massage my legs and feet with chocolate butter creme. Regular pedicures include a massage, but the chocolate pedicure massage lasts longer.

The total chocolate pedicure experience lasts about 90 minutes.

"We'll probably serve hot cocoa with it in the winter," Witter adds.

And for the fall, Abraham plans to introduce cranberry and pumpkin signature services.

What? No roast turkey pedicure?