Vata Friendly goes to the Big Apple

My husband and I recently traveled to the East Coast, stopping in New York City, where we first met, for four days. Knowing that our Air BnB would be petit and kitchen-less, I was determined to avoid stomach aches by eating only at Vata Friendly restaurants. Some pre-trip research was in order! There are more than 20,000 restaurants in Manhattan alone.

I used Ayurvedic, Vegan, and Buddhist as keywords in my research. "Ayurvedic" resulted in a few, not many, some of which were synonymous with plain old Indian. The prizewinner of that category was Divya’s Kitchen. I could easily see from their website, menu and quick reply to my Instagram query that Divya’s had an Ayurvedic philosophy behind their menu. In terms of being the restaurant most aligned with Vata Friendly, I don’t think any other restaurant compares.

Needing to eat at least six more meals and not always being on the Lower East Side, however, I searched under "vegan" and landed on Le Botaniste. I consider Le Botaniste to be a Vata Friendly chain because the staff has been trained to actively listen to each customer’s dietary restrictions. My order was taken not over a counter but from a caring, knowledgeable "pharmacist" who came around to the line of us customers and listened to my list of food sensitivities. Le Botanist's brand is to “prescribe” an ideal dish after listening. My lunch was a complex, organic, avocado-laden salad* (not a bad thing to eat for lunch on a hot day) and I shared a buckwheat brownie with cashew cream for dessert — yum!

You would think that Vegan, as a category, would be an exact match to Vata Friendly, but it’s not. Vegan usually means a lot of raw vegetables-which give Vatas gas. Vatas need to eat warm mushy stews and soups. Most restaurant stews or soups have onion and garlic in the base. However, vegan restaurants are likely to be more sensitive and caring than, for example, steak restaurants. Anyway, since vegan was a fairly large category, I moved on.

The third search criteria was “Buddhist.” It being New York City, I figured that there must be a restaurant that follows a strict version of Buddhist cuisine that does not include onion and garlic. And we found a winner! It was Hangawi, a Korean Zen establishment with lots of atmosphere. It was here that I nearly fell off my chair when I was presented with a separate special menu for allium free and gluten free customers — the first I've ever seen!

I felt so privileged to have my special menu that I neglected to ask about the side sauces that came with my pumpkin pancakes. Turned out that my (yummy) sauce was made of bell pepper and tomatoes. It went well with the pumpkin, but alas, this nightshade combo was too harsh. The waiter was appropriately horrified that he did not know about my bell pepper restriction, and whisked it away.

Happy to announce that the trip was a success. Four days of fun eating and no indigestion!

*NYC restaurants have learned that avocados are key ingredient to making salads worthwhile. They were in every salad I had.