…at M Cafe De Chaya, a macrobiotic restaurant on Melrose where Desmond and I had lunch with a friend the other day. Ok, that’s not, fair. Macrobiotic cooking is not psychotic, but that was a hilarious nickname my wife and her friends used to call that dietary philosophy in college (my microscopic understanding of Macrobiotic eating is that it’s a yin yang sort of balance thing with minimal dairy and animal protein, a nice balance of color, acid, local, etc etc. Actually sounds pretty smart). Long way of saying, this place is healthy: there’s tempeh, there’s seitan, there’s quinoa. But there’s also gorgeous chocolate cupcakes, brown rice crispies, and an awesome awesome make that three awesomes tuna burger with shisoh leaf and some amazing aioli-esque sauce. They even sell organic wine (or is it macrobiotic wine?) This is my kind of health food. The opening chef was Gwyneth Paltrow’s personal chef or something like that. The setup being: I didn’t expect my hyper picky, two and a half year old Desmond to want to eat a single thing. So when our food arrived, indeed he didn’t agree with me on the excellence of the tuna burger. But: shock of shocks, he couldn’t stay away from the coleslaw (which looked and tasted classic in execution, though I’m sure there were macrobiotic tweaks; couldn’t taste ‘em). Cabbage? Who knew? Oh yeah, he loved the chocolate cupcake too. Every last macrobiotic bite of it.
—Hugh
