Review of Restaurante Satori
This restaurant in the Liberdade neighbourhood, a kind of Japantown/Asiantown in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, is a little bit hidden in a commercial building first floor, serving macrobiotic diet food.
I'm not an expert but as I understand macrobiotic was based in the idea that every food has a yin or yang energy. When eating we try to balance these opposite poles by instinct, like adding pickles in a greasy burger or apple puree aside pork meat.
The right thing to do, for the macrobiotic diet followers, would be select the food that are in the middle of this scale, avoiding the ones that figure in the extremes. That is the ingredients that don't have sharp taste or color, like roots, vegetables, salad, grains and mainly brown rice.
It seems to me that the brown rice is believed to be the main food, almost perfect, centric and even mystic. In this restaurant the brow rice is very soft, moist and sticky. I was wondering if their recipe is made with pressure cooker but I've heard that their secret is a slow cooking technique using rocks over the pot lid to seal.
In the following picture I show their brown rice covered with what they call "gersal", sesame seeds and salt (gergelim and sal in portuguese). Believe me, I really love their brown rice. I suspect it's addictive and leads to dependency because as I write this sentence I salivate so much that a slobber drop almost fell from my mouth to the smartphone screen :-)
I think the restaurant menu is a little bit complicated. They work with a daily fixed menu and you can choose from the small portion (pequeno) to the regular (normal), passing through a basic version (básico). Then you can add an extra (especial) and a soup (sopa). I post a picture of their menu with prices in Reais (R$ brazilian fiat money), the daily ingredients menu is written in a white board showing its positions in primary, secondary and tertiary (still a mystery to me).
The access to the restaurant can be confusing and intimidating too, located in the first floor of a commercial building (picture of the facade added), you should identify yourself to a porter. After taking a picture and type a PC he would give you a magnetic card to open the access turnstile (if you loose it the fine is R$ 50) or a plastified card written “Acesso Entrada/Saída Restaurante Satori” (Access In/Out Satori Restaurant, picture added too).
To me it’s worth the effort. The macrobiotic diet started do be promoted outside Japan in the 30’s and gained some attention here in the 60’s and 70’s, when a restaurant called Arroz de Ouro (Rice of Gold) became somewhat popular. As you can deduct by my family name and avatar, São Paulo city has a big japanese immigrants population and the hippie, natural and healthy food movement helped to spread the diet between musicians and artists, some of them became famous and now we can see them next to Prof. Kikuchi (restaurant founder) in photos stuck to the walls.
Thanks and good luck again!
| Restaurant Name | Restaurante Satori |
|---|---|
| Address | Praça Carlos Gomes, 60 - Centro, São Paulo |
| Location | -23.5530994, -46.63586600000001 |
| Type of Food | International |
| Occasion | Lunch |
| Time of Day | Daytime |
| Price Range | Medium |
| Rating | 4 |
It does look really good and your description leaves me really wanting to try it out. I will have to look for one that serves this style of food near me.
Thank you very much! I hope you can find a place to try the macrobiotic diet and share your opinion in a Let's Eat review soon too :-) Another important thing, you should eat it slow, the food looks colorless and ugly but the delicate taste flourish while you're chewing. Congratulations for the app, thanks and good luck again!