Souen Was Populated by Dinosaurs and Served Twig Tea. I Loved It.

I moved into Manhattan in 1969, had a great 3 bedroom apartment on West 21 St, ($275/month), because we couldn't afford the Village, (!!!), and left in 1995...even seeing the name Souen stopped me in my tracks as I read todays' paper. I said it out loud, repeated it...what was that? What was Souen??? I asked myself. I knew the sound of the word and the sight of the word. Then I read the article and zapo! I remembered it all...the taste and smell and sight of it all, loving the descriptions given of the food and the diners found there...a true blast from the past. It is closing...no wonder. It is an ancient shard of a life that is no longer possible, in the city of my dreams, for people like me. Once, it was Camelot.

I just came across this, so by now Souen has closed. Muhlke noted that "while there is a certain joylessness to some of the food, there is always an emotional warmth that comes through on the plate." There was no pretense with the food: it was food, nothing more and nothing less. Simple, cooked with care, reliably delicious to those who enjoy simple ingredients cooked to perfection. The joy was supplied by the people who gathered to eat the food. It was a place whose calm, and calming, atmosphere, enhanced our senses. Conversation, never drowned out by loud music,could be enjoyed. My twin and I, and our circle of friends, gathered at Souen for decades, celebrating birthdays, eating well, enjoying each other's company. I miss it already.

I was never a fan... super boring....

Ah...so I'm a dinosaur huh? Had many meals there. I knew Alan Hoffman the baker and seitan maker at Souen, we shared the same professions and the fact that we both still had a baby tooth...I baked his wedding cake. Anyone remember: The Cauldron? The Cauldron's Well (next door) on W. 4th St? It was a kosher macrobiotic restaurant/bakery. Cyna was the head baker. I tried to get some recipes from her but she convinced me to develop my own. The East - West Cookery? Shojin, where they revolutionized tofu pies by using their own homemade silken tofu? There was also a macro restaurant on the east side around mid town where I worked as a baker but I can't remember the name...it was owned by moonies.

I’m abhor the instagram-focused restaurant fad, but that being said, you are not “compelled” to instagram anything. You should be able to go to any restaurant, sit, eat, and not instagram any part of it.

I went there one night with my husband when we lived downtown. It took some doing for him to agree. (Note On Jerry: Even after we married he still drank instant coffee.) But there we were next in line to be seated when this short Japanese woman came in behind us. The greeter swung his menu-laden body to the left past us and scooped up the Japanese lady and her companion and seated them. Well, that was it. We were out of there! I grabbed his hand and said, “It’s OK, Jer, it’s Yoko Ono.” In New York, and you’re Souen or any other celeb hive, you have to give in to certain rules just to stay alive.

I always like telling people I put myself through art school working at a Japanese, macrobiotic restaurant in Soho - of course it was Souen. I scraped by on two dinner shifts a week (it was the mid-eighties). There were some great people there on staff - the majority of whom were Japanese - and turnover was very low. We shared our tips and got each other’s back when we were slammed (& kept our crazy boss in check). They always fed me before my shift and often the chefs would pack me a nori maki for my lunch the next day. But it was a business, a restaurant, a job - so my memories are also grounded in hard work, tired feet and I must have carried my weight in tempura (I still can’t eat it). We had many great regulars, some percentage of people who were overly precious about their food and a lot of Soho neighbors - like one who when he found out I was working on my birthday, went home and came back dressed head to toe as Carol Channing and sang to me. Andy Kaufman would come in some Saturday nights right before 11:00 - order, pay his bill and hang out while we closed up. Michio Kushi would eat there and we knew our tips would suffer because despite the fact that he started his dinner with pie... all the customers around him would order the simplest meals and chew very slowly. And then there was the night I let a customer back in after closing to use our phone. She needed to call a locksmith. I clearly remember her spelling her name out for them Susan S-o-n-t-a-g...

I am sad to see all the old time macro restaurants closing. We just lost Inaka here in Los Angeles, and the Kushi Institute (where I trained 20 years ago after a health crisis) shuttered recently. Souen was a homey little place to re-calibrate, balance and fortify whenever I was in the city. Hopefully, macrobiotics will become relevant again (after Paleo/Keto/Juicing, etc) and a new generation will discover this restorative and powerful way of eating.

I ate at the original Souen on Broadway in the 90s at least once or twice a week for several years before leaving the city. It was a true "neighborhood place" where some of the regulars brought their own chopsticks. The food was delicious, healthy, and affordable. Miso spread and sourdough bread, hijiki salad and gomasio on brown rice...I loved it and miss it still!

It’s the only place for me where you can feel like home or even better then home . After long trips the first place I would go would be souen or imagine being there when traveling as the hearth I was missing . The food was so reassuring and no one can duplicate the recipes. It’s the only place I feel I can go alone at the counter in the window and not feel like a social misfit . The epicenter is the staff who seem like they live there . I’ll miss Beth and Rayus a lot , you get a knowing smile when you walk in the door , but not too much of a smile which is exactly perfect. Nyc is getting colder by each passing day , I was born here , my business and my home and life is here , but for how much longer I can not say .

At first, Souen was a place I frequented primarily as a respite from attempting to follow the Michio Kushi diet at home. At Souen, the food tasted like food – especially with generous doses of their oat sauce and carrot dressings. Later, I would eat there when I felt my body needed it. It was something of an edibles infirmary for me and I would expect for many others as well. Those who love this city may, to the understandable distress of other lovers, mourn the passing of beloved spots beyond our apartments. For me it will always be the used bookstore on West 4th between Bank and West 12th. Over time, one begins to consider these spots, these rooms, as extensions of our homes – safe, familiar, nourishing spaces. Even dinosaurs need shelter.

I moved to NY in 1980 and lived in Soho for 38 years, only recently departing from the ceaseless high rise construction and hedge fund attitude. I went to Souen in the early 1980s and felt I wandered in to the most powerful argument against eating healthfully. I went back over the years, typically because someone who knew I lived in Soho asked to meet there. I didn’t so much hate it — after all, how can anyone hate that much earnestness? — but I always thought that I’d rather not eat than eat what they served. I am sorry to see another institution pass into history, but I can’t honestly say I will miss Souen.

The Souen was way ahead of the times in promoting a plant-based diet, now with extensively documented health benefits. The dinosaurs and models knew something that New York Presbyterian Medical Center still hasn't picked up on. Doctors can be slow learners. Perhaps they should talk more to models and dinosaurs and have fewer genetically modified lunches with Pharma reps. Oh, but those lunches are free, I forgot.

I moved to SoHo in 1975, when large my ground floor studio apartment with 12 foot ceilings, exposed brick walls, a working fireplace and a backyard (in a safe and friendly Italian tenement building) cost $250/month (so scandalously expensive I could barely bring myself to disclose). I have frequented Souen since the beginning. I can relate to the comments about the eccentric and sometimes socially-challenged behavior of staff, but I loved the place and the food was great. Between this, the recent demise of the Cornelia Street Cafe and the deeply disheartening sight of so many retail spaces in the West Village going empty I am filled with sadness at the loss of the neighborhood I loved (over the course of geological time ago...)

Just the other night I was telling dinner guests about Souen and how I learned to eat and cook and savor my food there. A New Yorker in exile for twenty years, to me Souen was and will remain a small piece of heaven.

I went to Souen the first time in the early 80s and was immediately hooked, and became a strict macrobiotic, on and off. In the last few years, it was my Go-To place, at least three times a week, and took so many friends there. When the original owner passed away a few years ago, they put up a photo of him on the North Wall where you entered. I had always seen him there, managing the ops. He was also a smoker like George Ohsawa and Michio Kuchi. As much as I loved the food there, particularly the best value meal in the city, the Macro Plate, the service left a lot to be desired. There are a handful of servers whom I got to know very well, and even became friends with. However, so many of the management there and some of the servers were seriously socially challenged. After having been going there for 35 years, I was always taken aback by how they acted like I was a stranger who had just walked in for the first time. I cannot say that this is Japanese culture, because in most Japanese restaurants, they shout of joy when you come in and when you leave. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was around last May, during Ramps season. I asked the one waiter who should not have been a waiter if I could have the ramps on the pasta instead of the pesto. he came back with the Pesto sauce and two twigs of ramps. and was charging me for the whole Ramps appetizer. When I complained the manager offered me 50% discount on the ramps and said it was my fault for ordering it wrong.

I read this article even though I don't live in NYC and have not eaten at Souen. When ill with a mystery virus which affected my speech years ago, I went to Kushi Institute in Massachusetts for a weeklong workshop on how to cook macrobiotic food. I slowly improved and have gone on macro cooking binges every once in awhile. If it's true for other readers and commentators as it was for the author, there appears to be a romantic aura around macrobiotic food: that it is cleaner, simpler and more austere - and that as a result, the person eating it also feels cleaner and austere. This is a powerful draw to this kind of food. To put into categories "grey dinosaurs" who eat there, or models and actors who were dieting is a superficial description of the attraction to living and eating this way. And for those who haven't tried it, "twig tea" is made from kukicha branches - and is available everywhere under trade names like "Choice" teas - and priced around $7. on Amazon. Plus, there are macrobiotic cookery books available at most libraries.

I came across this article reading my phone literally awaiting my lunch here at the Soho restaurant. I will be so sad to lose the place - it has a character and quality I’ve enjoyed in the short time (2 years) I’ve known and frequented the place with my wife.

As a vegetarian, I was excited about Souen and heard how Russell Simmons frequented the restaurant. So cool I thought! However, I recall dining there and my dish ended up being rice and a steamed sweet potato served whole. There may have been a side of some greens also steamed. I felt like I was in a post-apocalyptic movie and this was my food ration.

I never comment, but my overwhelming sadness at the closing of Souen has moved me to memorialize my feelings. I arrived in NYC in 1981, a drug addict and junk food eater (when I ate). In the early stages of recovery, I found Souen and noticed how much better I felt after each meal. I became a regular. On the wall of the 13 th St. location, (better before they renovated), was a poster for a macrobiotic teacher, Denny Waxman. This is where my education began, at Souen, and continues to this day. I doused everything with sauce and spreads. I measured my cooking with Souen’s to make sure I was on the right track. When I lived in the Village, Souen was my local takeout. They delivered when I was incapacitated. I ate at one of their locations at least once a week. When I moved out of state 13 years ago, the waiter gave me the carrot dressing recipe. I use this today on Angelica’s cornbread recipe. I live somewhere where it is possible to have a good vegan meal, but none dedicated to the spirit of One World/one grain,ten thousand grains like Souen. I am visiting in February and was counting on returning to Souen. In a way they helped save my life. I am heartbroken.

When AIDS first hit everyone was in a panic, changed their habits of doing drugs, going out all night to naughty places with backrooms for sex and headed for Souen. It was packed with fashion people thinking if they ate macrobiotic it would help stop the virus within them, that the body would fight back. No one knew about this terrible disease. So the closing of this wonderful restaurant which gave me an education of a certain way of eating I maybe wouldn't have known about is sad but it's also the way of money, rents, commerce.

Ah! Macrobiotics and George Ohsawa. FWIW he smoked (cigarettes) like a chimney and loved Scotch whisky.

While the food may not have been that tasty, it was healthy and it was nice knowing it was there, of course. But this is NYC, right? Consumed by money...with commercial tenants and apartments being surrogates for money. It is a continuing sadness in NY that so little of the older venues are able to survive, at least for NYC residents who have been here for some years. Once the lease is up for most restaurants and retail shops, that's it. Ultimately, without some sort of protection for commercial places that have been a hallmark of NYC life for many years, unless the store or restaurant happens to own the building, their days continue to be numbered.

It's impossible for me to mourn this restaurant. There is more "natural", raw, vegan, gluten-free food being cooked in this city than ever before. And they're doing it in a way that actually tastes good, something that Souen was never concerned with. I can't fathom how it stayed open this long. But then, I'm not at war with food, I'm in love with it.

I ate at the Souen on 13th St./Union Square back in the day - once. I don’t like the “tone” of this article. I had a friend take a picture of me in front of the place so I’d have “proof” I had eaten there. I didn’t see any “models” or John & Yoko. (Turns out J&Y frequented a different one on the Upper East Side.) Not to mention Lennon was dead all ready. Any case, I loved it. It was a splurge due to the price, but it was so wonderful to eat a complete Macrobiotic meal prepared by someone other than myself. Lotta work. And I didn’t leave hungry! I didn’t know there was a Souen in SoHo until today. And other commentators don’t like the “tone” either - it should tel you something if people with grey hair frequent the place: they’ve lived long enough to go grey by eating this way! Sheesh.

After closing Angelica Kitchen in April '17, many many people lamented "where am I going to eat?"....... and I answered that I had no idea. There is a prodigious demand for organic, clean, whole (NOT Whole Foods) food with integrity; a socially just entrepreneur with big bucks could/would/should step up and get busy! A neighborhood location or 2 with heart, a place to gather and break bread, eat well to fuel our lives - we all need that now more than ever! Putting this thought out there for the person or people who can do this and good luck!

Much as I love exciting tastes, there are times when I want and need good, clean, plain food that tastes only of itself. I miss the Union Square location most, but my earliest memories are of Soho and a millet croquette with a lovely sauce that disappeared from the menu but not from my mind. I've been hoping, unsuccessfully, to find something comparable ever since.

I didn’t realize there was a Souen in NYC, but I was a fan of Souen in Boston. Was it owned or started by the same people?

Down here in Little Italy we miss Poeme, Kitchen Club, Sambucca, Paolucci, the original Luna (not the current one), and having a Met Foods, an actual supermarket, close by (better produce than the Whole Foods at Bowery/Houston. We've never patronized most of the red-gravy joints on the street, but it's a shame they're rapidly falling, by ones and twos, to t-shirt shops and crummy "concept" stores, most of the new ones not chic boutiques on our block and those just north and south. North Chinatown is slowly but inexorably getting gentrified. Thank goodness we still have, and always will have Di Palo. And there are still good places to eat around here. Please ruin my life by helping to keep Fiat Cafe and Aux Epices in business. If so, it will be harder for us to get a table, but it's a small price to pay.

Ugh mourned only of ups do not like food with flavor

"​With its seitan cutlets" ... "​where everything is ... gluten-free" Seitan is 100% gluten, and totally delicious.

Please! Stop trying to romanticize this place! Souen has always been a dingy, poorly lit and not the cleanest spot West of SoHo. Sorry to see it leave - it was what it was. Why don't they do a Go Fund page like the unabashed Tea & Sympathy in the Village.

I will mourn Souen, but it’s a mistake for the author to equate ‘macrobiotic’ with ‘vegan’. My favorite Souen dish was the braised salmon filet in miso soy broth with steamed veggies. There’s nothing vegan about salmon, nor about the macrobiotic diet!

I'm very sorry to read that Souen will be closing. Angelika Kitchen, another macrobiotic restaurant, closed within the past 5 years or so as well. I practiced macrobiotics from 1982-1994, & these longtime haunts were among my favorites.

First ate at Souen in the 80's. Never much liked it, not macrobiotic by any stretch, but it was an institution. As the author points out, Soho has been dead for a very long time. I remember eating at Food in the mid 70's, back when Soho was all artists. I remember visiting friends of my parents who were founding members of the Soho artists coop, bought a building on the corner of Wooster and Grand in 1968. Of course, all neighborhoods in NYC are dead or dying. I lived in Williamsburg in the 90's, when it was a mix of artists and working class Hispanics. My wife and I had a loft with views of Manhattan from every window. Wonderful neighborhood. All gone.

And what about the Souen restaurant uptown, originally at Broadway? If you want to know what customers depended on there, it was Trust. Trust that your food would be cooked with the care and attention that created a calm atmosphere in the dining room and left you feeling healthier than when you came. Fortunately, the original owner's wife (Lee) still runs the kitchen--now as Mana, on Amsterdam at 91st--where she and the friendly waitstaff (mainly Tibetans) keep the spirit and goodness of macro cooking alive and well!

I’ve been eating at Souen since the 90s and chose my first apt on east 13th street because of it (across from the now closed location on University). Their kabocha squash and tahini, salmon teriyaki and macro plate were delicious and joyful! This is a sad loss for the city.

I loved Souen, Angelika, and Honmura An. Honmura An was delicious, beautiful, and had a peaceful Zen quality. I suppose the only places left to eat in peace are Integral Yoga Institute and Shivananda (if that is still possible since I left NYC 7 years ago).

Dragged there by a friend from art school in the early 70s who moved to Soho months before I did. The neighborhood didn't even have a bodega or pharmacy. The food seemed bizarre to me at the time. Souen wasn't especially interesting but it was somewhere to go until we discovered Gordon Matta-Clark's glorious FOOD nearby. Now that was a place to mourn....

Aw, sad news! I ate at Souen when I lived nearby in the early 80s, before that neighborhood had a name. It remains the most comfortable restaurant in which to eat dinner alone I've ever known. And perfect food for hangovers. I left New York many years ago, and I'm sorry to hear it's closing but also astonished and heartened that it lasted so long.

This local ate there once, and found the actitude and sense of moral sanctimony radiating from the place far more memorable than the mediocre, overpriced food. "Food for people who don't like food." And food for people who use food to make a Statement about their superior character; that's always seemed to be the underlying sociology of macrobiotic cooking. No, thank you. Though it's axiomatic Souen will be replaced by something even more insufferable and transient, it's otherwise no great loss.

As Ms. Muhlke mentions details of her marital life, the readers may be interested to read of the reactions of all of her husbands to her culinary excursions. Although not a New Yorker, I commiserate with the locals on disappearance of any venerable eatery and its replacement by something trendy for the politically correct leftist radical Democrats. Curiosity overwhelms me: WHAT IS TWIG TEA?

Criticizing the patrons ("dinosaurs") is an amateur move.

Ayurveda Cafè on Upper West Side is still one of those homey old spots!

In the '70's when I lived on the Upper West Side, we had a Souen downstairs on Broadway and 90th Street where if we were lucky we would run into John and Yoko.

Souen, closing. Oh. Sigh. Christine, thank you for reporting this and writing a fitting tribute to a place that was at once practical and fanciful. Souen was where I ate in the 1970s and 1980s as a post-college art history major patronizing SoHo's galleries and a curious cook who'd been studying macrobiotics with a nutritionist and eager to see what chefs could do with all those ingredients that were exotic to me. Souen was as important to me then as Cafe Crocodile and Lutece, as Il Nido and Uncle Tai's Hunan Yuan. It could be restorative, it could be thrilling. It was, as well, a community. It was the yin to Kenny Shopsin's yang. (Or maybe vice-versa.) I'm grateful both were there to sate my moody eating habits. Cheers, Andy Clurfeld

Ugh, it's about time. I loathed this restaurant-I'd been dragged there many times by friends who "loved" it...I adore fresh veggies, brown rice, fruit, healthy low fat eating but the food in this place was...as the writer of this article noted, "joyless". Every single thing tasted like the same ancient piece of cardboard...I lost my appetite each time I was coerced into going there. I hate what's happening to my city-the utter Mallification by non-New Yorkers and foreigners, but this is one space I can't mourn.

I loved the Souen at Union Square and went there for many years. The food had integrity - it was true macro biotic food , prepared with consciousness and care. The food was simple and flavorful- perfectly cooked rice, beans, vegetables, soups, fish. It was nourishing and affordable. This is what is lost when all that matters is money.