THE IKU INTERVIEW: Ken Israel

Interviewed by Claudette Vaughan

Founder of the macrobiotic restaurants in and around Sydney, Ken Israel spoke to Claudette Vaughan recently about macrobiotic vegan cooking and the IKU restaurants' (there are 6 now) phenomenal popularity.

Please give us a brief history of IKU...

My background is in advertising. I was an art director/graphic designer and because of my own health issues back in the early 80's I stumbled across macrobiotics.

From my own health experience it proved that it worked so I thought to myself then there must be something to this. In those days in Sydney you couldn't find anywhere to eat and it was very hard to learn what to do with the food. So I become like a crusader, wanting to have better quality food out there. Back in the 80's the macrobiotic community was quite small I persuaded Holly Davis, a good friend of mine to start the first IKU. Holly had a place in Balmain at the time that only opened on a Friday/Saturday night.

So in the beginning I was there as a passionate landlord. I loaned her the money, I did the place up for them and gave them cheap rent. That was in 1985.

As the years went by I grew more and more distant from the advertising scene. The stock market crash in 1987 almost wiped me out financially. I sold the Glebe Point Road premises. After that I took 2 years off looking after my son. During that time I built a house up in Avalon.

Holly suggested that I buy her partner's share of IKU which I subsequently did.

From 1996 on I ran the business on my own from there.

IKU is a unique place to eat at. How many shops do you have now?

There are six shops with a seventh about to open in the Met Centre. That will be opening in mid-December. The reason why the IKU businesses have stuck around so long and grown is because I am so passionate about what I am doing. If I was there for the money I would have given up ages ago. It was lucky that I had a little bit of money with me from the old advertising days. I have only make a meager wage for the past 10 years cooking and running IKU but I continue because of my passion for macrobiotics.

The magick of macrobiotics is such that it understands that people in western society are ill people because of environment we created. Pollution is taken in off the streets and in the other foods eaten and the skin absorbs harsh chemicals used to wash clothes etc.

By cooking in such a way that food naturally changes one's energy macrobiotic cooking addresses these issues. I see macrobiotic cooking as always dealing with the physiological breakdowns and blocks in the body caused by western living which for the most part is ultimately debilitating. How do you interpret macrobiotics Ken?

To me it's all about balance. I know we are talking about veganism here and all our cafes are vegan but for me it's all about balance and health. What I have noticed with my own experience of eating is if you are more balanced in the way you eat, then you are more balanced emotionally, you are more balanced physically and you are more balanced mentally. I think we could have a super human race if people were out there more balanced and more considerate with the people around them. A lot of people look at macrobiotics as being a really narrow thing but if you follow the macrobiotic lifestyle the aim is although you may indulge yourself sometimes it's all about eating in moderation and to understand intuitively what your body can take or not take. Everybody's constitution is different. With IKU we are trying to sell on a fast food level, as cheap as we possibly can and still survive as a business and give people the opportunity to experience good, clean food.

The other thing about macrobiotics is that the macrobiotic lifestyle is a transformer of energy – our energy. It's the difference between eating organic food and eating the pesticide and herbicidal ridden food. Would you agree?

Absolutely. However people get on this thing about eating ‘organics' but they are eating organic sugar and all this unhealthy food and it's playing havoc with them. To me macrobitoics is all about balance. They are still drinking gallons of fruit juice in the middle of winter and it's making them sick. A lot of people go on a traditional meat-eating diet or they will go on a raw food diet or juice diet and they will feel fantastic but they can't sustain this level because the energy isn't there after the initial benefits have passed. They might feel fantastic for 6 months but after 2 years they start eating sick. The whole thing about Macrobiotics is eating a balanced diet.

IKU Darlinghurst: Hayley, Claudette, Kasia (left to right)

Yes the food you serve too Ken is the type that won't change your energy so quickly that you can't operate in western culture because of over-sensitivity to culture and the day to day stresses associated with life.

We are trying to reach people who are out there and on a limb and want to eat our food and it will also be palatable for them.

If we cooked completely medicinal food people wouldn't like it so we are trying to get a food that is rich enough and strong enough in flavour that meat-eaters will like it, they'll eat it and hopefully will not go away because they think it's bird food or something like that.

Talking about the recipes now. I'm blown away with your caramelised onion tarts made with tofu and arame seaweed. Having said that I think IKU reaches people beyond the level of a sense-based cuisine.

Yes macrobiotics nourishes a person on a deep level. For us at IKU, cooking is an alchemy. It's not about having a list of ingredients and throwing it all in the pot. It's about how you cook the food, how you slow sauté vegetables and how this changes vegetables energetically. As one example, we go to a lot of trouble to slow sauté food to bring out the natural sugars in our food and this brings out their natural sweetness. So instead of adding sugar we are bringing out the natural sugars in the food.

Who devises the menus at IKU?

In the beginning Holly Davis did but I have been cooking macrobiotic meals, 3 times a day, 7 days a week for 20 years now. I never wanted to cook in a restaurant. We have just relocated to a centralised kitchen in a larger premises in Marrickville.

In moving to a larger kitchen we will be able to update and expand our equipment enabling us to develop the wholesale side of the business and better cater for future IKU outlets. The people who work for me are highly passionate about what we are doing and people are adding ideas all of the time. IKU is constantly evolving and constantly changing. We don't want to be the same as we were last year or the year before. Because we are health orientated there is new information coming to light all the time about what people need.

Take for instance the high/low carb diets that are around. They apply more to an American diet where they are eating lots of processed carbs. The carbs we're eating are slow-released biodynamic grains. So we are not eating the bad carbs. A lot of people are scared off our food as we don't have meat and they think it's not healthy. But it is healthy.

It's remarkable what a balance of grains, vegetables and legumes can do for you. What advise would you give people who want to go macrobiotic?

My advise to people is to ‘take it slowly'.

When I first got into macrobiotics I was eating steaks and drinking 15 cups of coffee per day with sugar and all of this. I dropped it all overnight. Just ease into macrobiotics. Introduce more and more grains and vegetables as you go along and there will be a time when you don't want to eat meat or you longer crave sugar. Macrobiotics is all about eating ‘more in the centre' without doing things all at once.

In Australia today you'll find most of our society already is semi-vegetarian. Not many people eat meat every night of the week anymore.

And that's happened because people like yourself have gone out of their way to educate the majority of people on the wonders of macrobiotic food.

I had a woman here from America not so long ago and she was doing her doctorate on food. She was amazed that everywhere she went there has been a vegetarian alternative.

She said she's traveled the world and this has not been the case in many other parts of the world. My hunch is IKU has played a large role in the last 20 years to that consciousness as we offer people a chance to experience good macrobiotic food.

We are fortunate to have you and IKU here in Sydney . Thanks Ken.