This weekend I made Miso soup. Because I can. Just like I can make melon-pineapple-cucumber-mint slushies, or coffee exactly as I like it, with beans I select, or gluten-free pancakes with real maple syrup, or oatmeal with almond milk (which sometimes goes into fruit smoothies along with The Ultimate Meal and Greens powder supplements). But that’s when I’m home and I have time to find and use the ingredients of (snobby) healthy living. When I travel, it’s another story.

This week I head to New York. I’m coming off a recent detox (I follow Goop, because it’s amazing and I’ve a secret obsession with Gwyneth Paltrow), a week in Kaua’i where I ate in every meal in, including dinners made from vegetables bought from a farmer’s market daily (down to the cilantro and jalapeno and mushroom I like to put in my quinoa), and fresh sushi-grade fish, also purchased daily. So how do I transition in a city with more food than an after party of The Biggest Loser?

One other catch. I’m staying in mid-town, and my company’s offices have moved from 19th Street, where there is more restaurant choice, to Penn Station, where there’s practically none. All of the hot and healthy places are in the West or East Village. Still, there’s always a gem if you look hard enough. One of my favorites is The Cafeteria on 18th Street on the corner of 7th Avenue, where the breakfast includes naughty stuff like blueberry ricotta pancakes, to healthy oatmeal and green eggs and ham (pesto and goat cheese scrambled eggs); they’re always willing to make turkey bacon, extra crispy.

Sure, I could just go to any classic New York restaurant and order the fish baked, with no sauce or butter; I could go to the numerous salad-to-go spots that pepper Times Square like overweight tourists in jean shorts. But I want someone to put some thought into healthy food; I want a dining experience. I want a chef that doesn’t just accommodate me, but prepares for me.

I search. Yelp is hopeless. CIty Search is helpless. Even Goop, filled with Paltrow’s haunts, is useless. Yahoo Local has suggestions, but there was a more promising list on Menu Pages. I’ll try some of these and report back. I’m not expecting almond-milk smoothies, but you never know. There’s always Miso soup.