Imagine a restaurant with no ovens, if you can. Yet a restaurant with some of the freshest and healthiest food you can eat. A recent visit to Borboleta Gourmet on 6th Street provided an eye-opening experience and education for me while I was meeting with the wonderful chef and owner, Virginia Morgan.

Virginia is a relatively new arrival to Austin, most recently from Portland, Oregon, where she really developed her skills related to her raw food offerings. And the term “raw food” should be explained further, as one tends to envision a lot of crunchy vegetables and not much more.

Raw foods – sometimes called “living foods” – are fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds that have not been heated above 118° Fahrenheit. This means that more of the minerals, vitamins, and enzymes are kept intact, which then means more nutrients can enter the body.

We discussed virtually all the basic ingredients Virginia uses for her recipes. She uses vegetables, fruits, nuts (though no peanuts), seeds, fresh beans, agave sweetener, pure oils, and a variety of herbs and spices to make wonderful dishes for all meals. Besides being gluten free, they tend to be almost exclusively certified organic, or non-certified but pesticide-free, and many are from local farmers and vendors. What she doesn’t use are animal products or any processed foods. With the exception of a container of milk for coffee drinkers, there is no meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, or other animal products in the restaurant. Soy protein in the form of tofu or tempeh is not used either. Two soy-based sauces are used, but are gluten free and detailed below.

Food processing that does occur at Borboleta includes the use of dehydrators. One of her chefs, Clark, used the analogy of “low and slow” – just like we might think of classic barbeque preparation. The various foods typically stay in the dehydrators from 24–36 hours. This helps with texture and flavor as well as color. Other processes related to food prep include soaking and the use of tasty marinades. Filtered water is used to soak the many tree nuts that go into the recipes, and juices and occasional oils are often used for various marinades. Blending foods at the right times, and in the right combinations, helps to obtain desired flavors and consistencies as well.

The sample menu items include her versions of lasagna and other pasta dishes, portabella steaks, nori rolls, dips and crackers, and a variety of salads. The “pasta” is made from zucchini, which is cut with special machines to make the noodle shapes. Similar to flour-based pastas, zucchini provides a bland base, and the sauces are added to it for flavor. The only thickener is agar, which is on our safe list.

Desserts are plentiful with cheesecake, macaroons, and fruit tarts as examples. The “crust” is made from items such as cashews, pecans, raisins, coconut butter, and agave. The breakfast granola with yogurt is truly heavenly and is worth a morning stop on your way to work. No oats are used. It contains pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, apples, pears, raisins, coconut oil and coconut butter, vanilla, and cinnamon. The “yogurt” is made similarly to the “ice cream”, with coconut meat, agave, cashews, and flavorings such as pure vanilla or fruit juices.

And there is a wide variety of drinks – juices, smoothies, teas, coffee, sparkling waters, and more. Virginia is also applying for a beer and wine license; currently customers are able to bring their own alcohol to enjoy with her food there.

Overall, for a celiac, this is a wonderful safe haven to visit. Cross contact doesn’t even need to be considered. There are not even the ingredients to cause issues. No flour is used anywhere, and no grains are used, not even oats or quinoa. It is worth noting that seven of the eight primary allergens don’t exist here. Tree nuts are the only exception.

The chefs do season with two soy-based sauces, but both are gluten free. One is Eden Organic’s wheat free tamari sauce (an organic counterpart to the San-J we are familiar with) – so that one is acceptable for us. The other is Cold Mountain’s gluten-free miso, which poses no problem either.

The spices used are primarily from Frontier Spices. I have contacted Frontier in the past, and though they cannot guarantee that they are gluten free due to a small amount of gluten-related product in their processing facility, the spices are the purest available to our knowledge.

Virginia herself experienced physical challenges based on what she ate over the years, seriously affecting her sinuses as well as her general overall well-being. She understands the concerns of her customers. Initially she was a vegetarian, yet she realized that wasn’t enough. Over time she was introduced to the principles behind being vegan and gluten free, and ultimately with preparing raw foods. Slowly she healed over time, and like many of us, she sees it as a “blessing in disguise.”

Once, in Oregon, she joined a group that met weekly to share healthy recipes. That group included a chef who ultimately became her mentor. Virginia then learned her own methods of food preparation with repeated trials in her own kitchen, and soon began catering for others. She found that people just loved her food and always wanted more. Ironically Virginia had not been a cook before, so there was nothing to unlearn. She was able to start from scratch for this new experience.

Luckily for us, she moved here to Austin last July. The space for her restaurant became available to her through a fortunate series of events and a lot of support for her food. The butterfly emerged. Inside, the décor and personal touches are hers as well. And something tells me that she’ll be moving on to a bigger place one day soon.

“Non-cooking” classes have already begun; they occur on the last Sunday of each month. We are happy to hear that this knowledge will be shared. Thank you, Virginia. (JW 08/09)