STILL raising your body's light vibration!

Since my colleague Kristen Chamberlain (of "Showering With Sharks" blog fame) is writing about food these days, I thought I'd follow her lead--although all of this may fall into the "more than you really want to know" category!

For 16 months in the late '70s (Kristen was not yet even a gleam in her mom and dad's eyes at that time), I lived in Venice, California, a half-block off of the Pacific and an amazing display of humanity on parade. While in L.A., I dined at a "natural foods" restaurant in the Topanga area, which is not far from Malibu and resonates with "new age/hippie" vibes. The establishment was called The Inn of the Seventh Ray. The menu was so pretentious and bizarre that I took one home with me, wrote an article about the place, mailed it to the (then) Minneapolis Tribune--and lo and behold, they published it in the food section of the paper on October 19, 1978. (I even got 30 whole bucks for that piece!) Included above the article was a cartoon by a staff artist--it showed two of the Inn's patrons floating away from their table; they are both almost out of the frame. One says to the other, "Quick John! Spit out that artichoke and grab a leg of lamb!" (Why, you ask? Keep reading!) Here's the Tribune article in its entirety:

MYSTICAL L.A. RESTAURANT EMPHASIZES 'LIGHT VIBRATION'

By David Lapakko

"We at the Inn of the Seventh Ray believe in giving you the purest of nature's energized foods--with a dash of esoteric food knowledge thrown in to raise your body's light vibration."

So begins the menu at a Topanga natural foods restaurant, where the New Era of Food Consciousness seems to have advanced to a stage of mundane earnestness befitting southern California.

The Topanga area, on the western edge of Los Angeles, is known for its devotion to the mystical. The night of my visit, a bookstore nearby featured an autograph session with a distinguished but obscure author who possessed nothing less than heavy karma. His trip? Praying with two loved ones in a triangular formation, which releases simply magical energies. "Wow--this stuff is really advanced!" someone marveled while flipping through the pages of his latest work.

Eating in Topanga has become really advanced, too, as the Inn of the Seventh Ray testifies. The menu tells us that "the lightest and least dense foods are listed in order of their esoteric vibrational value for your experimentation." The meaning of that sentence, despite a fairly rigorous five years at Macalester College in St. Paul, still eludes me. But then, Topanga deals in more than mere education: "Awareness" seems to be "what's really happening."

I was able to surmise, however, that vegetables are less dense than meats, for they are listed first on the Inn's menu. "Five Secret Rays," at the top, are vegies from the Inn's "master steamer." "Artichoke Queen of Light," the next entree, verges on the gastronomically sublime: It is "a green crown of starry organic gems with the center removed and replaced with a culinary masterpiece of white fire tofu and sesame seed filling laced with ginger and sprinkled with the freshest of chives--very high and light."

The "Gold Chalice," next on the bill of fare, raised my food consciousness to the pinnacle of nirvana: "a cup of acorn squah filled to the lip with Saint Germain's own alchemy-blend of the freshest of herb stuffing with an unusual base of millet and steamed in our master's own steamer to an exact alchemical formula for transmutation into gold energy."

Believe me--I wish I were only making all this up.

I finally settled for the "Om-ri-tas," largely because it came "direct from the violet planet, a spaceship of nature's perfect vessel." This translated to half an eggplant stuffed with olives, nuts, and "unusual cheeses," which were all carefully married in a white wine sauce--"for your transportation."

The next morning, I discovered that the "Om-ri-tas" was not so carefully married to my gastrointestinal tract.

Prices at the Inn are not out of line for Los Angeles, in other words, occasionally higher than the Twin Cities. But if my wallet stood in the way, the management offered this consolation: "It will cost slightly more, but we believe in the long run it will be much less expensive and your body will work more efficiently and we hope your consciousness will become awakened."

Altogether, the Inn of the Seventh Ray makes Minneapolis' Prashad Kitchen (3515 W. 44th St.) seem like just another branch of Mickey's Diner.

But that is because no place can compete with the Inn when it comes to cosmic food awareness. As the front of the menu proclaims: "Dining creekside in old Topanga next to the mother flow of water at the Inn of the Seventh Ray is a unique and different experience. We want you to rest unhurried and soak up Saint Germain's violet ray, and to experience a timelessness of what can be the coming culture of the Golden Age."

Now that's dining experience too heavy for words.

David Lapakko is a free-lance writer from Los Angeles.

End of story, right? No way, Jose. Just tonight it occurred to me: whatever happened to the Inn of the Seventh Ray? I was there almost 30 years ago! Surely this place must have bitten the cosmic dust by now, somehow vibrating itself into oblivion. So, I went to yahoo search and discovered that the Inn is still around, with all of its charm! Whoda thunk it? Not only that, but when I went to the Inn's website (yes, everybody has a website these days), I found the following information (emphasis added):

"The property was discovered by the present owners and restored to it’s [sic] natural beauty, Over the passing years the restaurant has become known as one of the places to go. We, at the Inn, believe in giving you the purest of Nature’s foods, energized as a gift from the sun with a dash of esoteric food knowledge and ancient mystery school wisdom tossed in for your seasoning and pleasure. It may just raise your body’s light vibration and the extra work may cost you a few pennies more, but we believe in the long run, this way of living and eating may prove less expensive. Your body elemental, that selfless, shy, invisible little fellow who works so hard to keep the oft mistreated human machine going, will jump with joy for your choice of this eating establishment. He prays and hopes you will return soon to make this a pleasant ritual with each return being a new celebration in honor of taking a small step on the path of good dinning [sic] and good doing." [sic, sic, sick!]

Yes, some things have changed there. The photos on the website make it look a little more "upscale" than I remember. And they're serving some new entrees, such as "Handcrafted Vegan Mascarpone Ravioli," "Black Trumpet Dusted Ahi Tuna" (didn't know trumpets could even DO that!), and "Pomegranate Lacquered Muscovy Duck Breast." Suffice it to say that this place is still out of my league; I may never achieve the state of enlightenment that would enable me to eat there on a regular basis. But nonetheless, it all brought back fond memories.