New York: Souen Macrobiotic Cuisine

Included in my culinary adventure was a trip to Souen, one of my sister's favorite restaurants in New York. Their specialty catered to the Macrobiotic Diet. People, including myself naively believed the Macrobiotic Diet composed of (and had the flavor of ) rabbit food. On the contrary, I found colorful salads, noodles, tempura, hearty bowls of stew and baked fish.
Primarily the diet includes sea vegetables (like seaweed), cauliflower, lettuce, broccoli, onion, ginger, garlic, onion and carrots. The main focus is to balance the body's yin and yang by eating vegetables that come from both the yin and yang spectrum. They shun vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, and bell peppers because they belong to the "nightshade" family which contain small levels of natural toxins that throw the body out of balance. Well, whatever doctrine they adhere to is fine with me, as long as the food was good---and it was. The seafood yuzu stew I had was deeeelicious!! I felt absolutely full without the heavy, lazy aftereffects of a traditional Dinty Moore stew.

Oh yeah, and I didn't know this until after I read the website weeks after I visited the restaurant; you're supposed to chew your food at least 30 times before you swallow as part of the macrobiotic diet rules. Gosh, no wonder the people around us were still there with 1/2 full plates after we gobbled our food down.