Cuisine

Neighborhood

CUISINE: Health Food
NEIGHBORHOOD: East Village, Greenwich Village, Soho

souen.net

210 Sixth Ave. |  28 E. 13th.  |  326 E. 6th

I am about to spill a treasured secret of my food-loving soul.  After this review, there is no going back: I am going to reveal something B-I-G.  Ready?  Let’s get intimate.

I like health food.  Like, I really, really, really like health food.  I voluntarily eat things like tempeh and I use stevia extract in my coffee instead of sugar and I just have this thing for whole grains.  Kale is my BFF. 

Given this confession, can we still be friends?*

OK, to the point.  I found a restaurant that I like more than kale (that’s a ringing endorsement if I’ve ever heard one): Souen, a super-duper-healthy joint that’s bringing veggies back.

DO NOT LET THE MACROBIOTIC-NESS DETER YOU.  I, like most people, went through many years of my life assuming macrobiotics were kind of new-agey and weird.  Well, I was right but that’s besides the point — just because it’s macrobiotic doesn’t mean it tastes bad.  I did a little wiki-research [little-known trade secret] and it turns out macrobiotic is just a super-healthy-elitist-I-make-cereal-out-of-dehydrated-carrots way of saying: I eat a lot of rice. 

The basic tenets are as following:**

>Grains are the staple of your diet.
>You supplement them with other things, like vegetables or fish
>You eat a balanced diet
>You eat what is in season.

YOU ARE PRACTICALLY A MACRO AND DIDN”T EVEN KNOW IT.  I just blew your mind. 

Anyways, if you call NYC home, and you like to eat healthy things sometimes, or you just like to eat yummy food sometimes that happens to be cooked out of healthy ingredients, then you should probably visit Souen.

A bit on the food:  This shit is delicious.  It is like crack vegetables.  The squash tofu has both squash and tofu (huh!) but also onions and carrots and nappa and broccoli and snow peas in a miso-tahini sauce.  Vegetables and Tofu in Pesto Sauce is a delicious dish made of vegetables and tofu in a pesto sauce.  Things are served with the fluffiest, nuttiest brown rice you will ever eat.  This is not a good representation of their menu, but it’s a good representation of what I like to order, and I have exceptional taste that you should strive to emulate.

I used to walk by this place and thing, pshhhhh.  Then they converted me to their cult (kidding).  But seriously dudes, give it a try.  Be open-minded.  And Eat your vegetables.

Bye.

* I feel like I need a disclaimer before I lose all credibility.  I REALLY like other things too: see BBQ. It’s not my fault.  I was raised by a vegetarian-organic-produce-loving-homemade-kombucha-brewing momma.

** I may have oversimplified.  Tomato, Tomatah,*** right?

***You can’t eat tomatoes on a macrobiotic diet.

Posted in FOOD on November 15, 2010 7:43am by Rachel Hochhauser | 37 comments

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We are young (early 20's) and hungry (for knowledge! music! art! food!) friends living on (or in areas which border) Manhattan. We moved to the city seeking higher education, and an alternative to frat parties and gin buckets. We prefer a bottle of Chianti to a keg, lunches at City Bakery to a dining hall, Joe's to Starbucks, Frankie's Amatriciana to Batali's. Our uniting factor is our love for food. For detailed, personal information, keep reading.
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