 "Photo: Jacqueline Mermea; The Daily Texan")
 "Photo: Jacqueline Mermea; The Daily Texan")
“Hey, write this down,” Casa de Luz owner Eduardo Longoria said to me as I sat down at a table near the front of the restaurant. “A customer once said to me, ‘I get a lot of nutrition at Casa de Luz — and the food isn’t bad either.’”
Corny as Longoria’s quip might be, it may be the best way I’ve come up with to summarize the experience of dining at Casa de Luz, Austin’s only vegan, macrobiotic organic restaurant.
Tucked among a Montessori school, a yoga studio and a macrobiotic cooking center, the restaurant is unique in its setting as well as its menu.
Located, ironically enough, at the site of a former meatpacking plant, the discreetly located Casa de Luz seems to exist in its own pure and peaceful world just blocks away from the bustle of central Austin.
Guests all sit together, family-style, at big tables throughout the cozy, dimly lit dining room. Upon my arrival, I was seated across from my “family” for the day.
Contrary to the typical norms of restaurant fare, Casa de Luz offers a fixed menu that includes only one complete meal at a set price of $12. The meals rotate daily depending on what is fresh and in season, but each contains some variety of grain, bean, green and vegetable based on macrobiotic levels of a balanced diet. And despite the simplicity of our meal of corn-tortilla empanadas and black beans, it was not just fresh and healthy — it was delicious.
Risking embarrassment, I commented no fewer than 12 times at the multiple subtleties of flavor I could detect in my blanched greens with garlic tahini sauce.
Everyone agreed.
Even Wilbur Davis, the only carnivore of the bunch, commented that the “complexity of flavor” that Casa de Luz was capable of creating through the most basic of ingredients left him satisfied.
Labeling a restaurant with titles like “vegan” and “macrobiotic” seems daunting. With first impressions, the maintenance of strict dietary categories such as these seems to conjure images of Gandhi and words like “depravity.” And though the restaurant does tout being both vegan and macrobiotic, Longoria agrees that these labels are the opposite of the restaurant’s goals.
“A bean is not macrobiotic,” he said, gesturing to the uneaten black beans left on his plate. “A bean is just food.”
Along with its food, it seems as though Casa de Luz is reluctant to put a label on anything. Longoria cringed as I referred to Casa de Luz as a restaurant.
“It’s a dining room,” he said, stressing the emphasis on the concept of the restaurant as a family. He opened the establishment in 1991 after volunteering at a similarly minded institution called the Eastway Center in Houston.
And though Casa de Luz may be free of meat, dairy and refined sugars, the restaurant is quick to welcome everyone. “Often, vegetarian or vegan food is associated with the things you can’t eat,” employee Alexa Jackson said. “Here, we like to focus on what you can eat.”
Natalie Marquis, a former Casa de Luz employee and member of my new table “family,” agreed as she dubbed the experience of eating at Casa de Luz “joyful.”
Marquis was right: The atmosphere at the restaurant was pleasant. Strangers sat together and carried on conversations in between bites of basmati rice. The cooks, a combination of volunteers and trained macrobiotic chefs, laughed in the exposed kitchen as they chopped raw vegetables and sauteed kale. Even Longoria’s toddler son seemed content as he slurped down cauliflower soup.
Though I‘m filled with the utmost admiration for Longoria and the principles upon which the restaurant was founded, I can’t help but notice a sense of irony that surrounds the Casa de Luz lifestyle. For nutrition based on such simple principles, it can seem exceedingly complex.
Most people don’t seem to have the time or the willpower to bypass the luxuries of convenience in favor of the dedication required to eat healthily. And though much of Longoria’s life is lived in the protective pocket of Casa de Luz, he understands the challenges that the everyday American endures in obtaining healthy, whole foods.
“I’m taking my kids to Disney World next week,” he said, “I know we won’t eat well there. I’ll miss it here,” he said, pointing to the rows of grains and fresh produce that line the wall of the kitchen. “But we’ll come back and just start again.”
This, more than anything, sums up the mentality that exists at Casa de Luz. To Longoria, food is and will always be dependent on the mindset in which one consumes it. Perhaps most poignant about the entire Casa de Luz experience is the refreshing authenticity that surrounds it all. Longoria’s recollection of the “I get a lot of nutrition at Casa de Luz — and the food isn’t bad either” anecdote illustrates the total package that Casa de Luz presents: that food is, and ought to be treated as, fuel for optimal health. Truly, it seems like we all could benefit from the principles that Casa de Luz offers.
Perhaps with an open mind, a new attitude and a hearty serving of lentils, we could all be better off.
