After high school, Reinfeld studied at the London School of Economics and then returned to the United States to go to law school, but his heart wasn't in it. So he deferred law school admission and set off on a journey through Europe and Asia. He saw the Berlin Wall come down, experienced revolutionary unrest in Prague, lived in a kibbutz in Israel, trekked in Nepal, meditated in India. After that, though he tried, law school just didn't seem like the thing for him.

In the late 1990s, he opened a personal chef service in Malibu, Calif., which he called Blossoming Lotus. That Lotus blossomed into a consulting firm, helping corporate dining rooms and other restaurants transform their menus to a more healthful approach.

While running that business, Reinfeld took time off to do something he'd long wanted to do: visit Kaua'i. He had met some people from there while traveling in India and felt a connection with them that he now characterizes as his first exposure to the aloha spirit. "I had a feeling even then that Hawai'i might be the final destination," he recalled.

On the Garden Isle, he stopped in at an Internet cafe called The Portal and made friends with the manager; pretty soon, he was helping transform The Portal into Blossoming Lotus café, which formally opened in September 2002. A while later, a tourist named Bo Rinaldi stopped by. An entrepreneurial sort with a Silicon Valley technology background and a long commitment to the vegetarian/organic lifestyle, Rinaldi bought Blossoming Lotus and came up with the idea of doing a book about their cooking style.

The book, an oversize volume on slick paper with hundreds of color photographs and reproductions of the work of Kaua'i artists, is enlivened by quotes from great masters. It was photographed and food-styled on Kaua'i, designed by Adam Prall of Hawaii Link Design co. with recipes tested by Blossoming Lotus chefs.

Reinfeld calls it "just a natural, organic, simple way of eating and living, having a consciousness of the world's limited resources and eating and living in a way that's about stewardship and caring what happens to all life."

Reinfeld himself began a slow transition to meatlessness more than a decade ago. "There was no extreme point, just a gradual realization that I felt better that way, both physically and in other ways." His commitment to non-violence also plays a role.

"Vegan World Fusion Cuisine" has recipes for Nooanda's pistachio blue corn-crusted tempeh, top, and carpe diem carrot almond pate nori rolls. Amy Archbold photos

Surya's fire-roasted gazpacho is also among the vegan dishes served up.

In his experience, as you eat lower on the food chain (eating the grain, for example, instead of the animals to whom the grain would be fed), you begin to develop an intuitive sense of what your body wants.

"What's true for one person isn't true for another. We're just biologically different. One of the things I emphasize is the gentle nature of the transition (from a typical Western diet to more aware eating). You should never have a sense of depriving yourself and there's no reason to compromise on taste. When you make this kind of shift, there are countless delicious international cuisines that you can call on for inspiration," he said.

Which brings us to the Blossoming Lotus, where "vegan world fusion cuisine" is the cooking style, borrowing foods and techniques from around the planet. For example, an Italian-style antipasto platter would include olives and homemade marinated artichoke hearts, but also grilled breadfruit instead of the more typical cured meats, a Greek-style olive tapenade spread, bruschetta (toasts) made with whole-grain bread and a peanut dipping sauce from Indonesia. Instead of spicy Jamaican jerk chicken, there's Jamaican jerk plantain, served with rice, red beans and mango chutney.

A Thai pizza involves spelt foccacia dough (spelt is a grain related to wheat but usually tolerated by people with wheat allergies), grilled vegetables and marinated tofu drizzled with a Southeast Asian curry sauce.

The café's secret ingredient, according to Reinfeld and Rinaldi's book, is mindfulness — gratitude for the food, an intention to heal and nurture. It is now collectively owned and managed.

Their goal in the book, says Reinfeld, is to awaken the creative inner chef of those who read it. "If you can eat, you can cook," says the self-taught chef.

Although there are dozens of recipes in the book, he spent a lot of time on a basic chapter at the back of the book called "Vegan Natural Food Preparation."

This very helpful beginner's aid covers techniques (cutting, steaming, sauteing, roasting, grilling, blanching), basic marinades and condiments used as building blocks in recipes throughout the book, sections on coconut and breadfruit (much used in the restaurant for health and sense of place), a primer on sprouting beans and another on making nut and seed cheeses, grain and legume cooking charts, a sugar conversion chart for alternative sweeteners and a three pages of super-simple, throw-together recipes. Those who find the recipes a bit intimidating should delve into this chapter first.

"Teaching on a conceptual level rather than on the basis of an individual recipe is more helpful. If you use a recipe to teach a principle or a concept and then give them ideas on how to make variations, you've taught a lot more than one dish," he said. "This book is actually designed to be like a mini-course in vegan food preparation, a kind of tutorial."

Reinfeld says he continues to page through cookbooks that use meat and dairy foods because the recipes are a source of inspiration. "I'd see a cookbook that has a recipe for blue-corn crusted salmon and say, 'Oh, I could do that with tofu or tempeh and it would be just as good.' "