Eleanor Lewallen describes harvesting sea vegetables as if it's a religious experience. "The tides are beautiful — how the sun shines through the water and onto the sea vegetables and the other living creatures. It's just an incredible gift," she says.

Near their home in Mendocino County, California, Eleanor Lewallen and her husband and partner, John, harvest the marine plants at low tide when they can wade into the Pacific Ocean. In the tide pools, the blue-green water swirls at their feet as they pull the colorful seaweed off rocks.

Those harvests yield culinary treasures that burst with the taste of the deep blue. The unique textures and versatile flavors of sea vegetables — which include nori, wakame and kombu — are ripe for inclusion in a plethora of dishes, according to chefs and sea-vegetable harvesters.

The seaweed gathered by the Lewallens for their Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company is rich in iron, minerals and protein, and devotees believe that certain varieties have healing properties. As consumers become more concerned with their health and more willing to investigate the health-boosting potential of natural foods and nutraceuticals, cutting-edge restaurateurs are dipping into the ocean's bountiful resources — both seaweed and other nonmainstream sea items such as fish oil, shark cartilage and chitosan (a dietary supplement made from chitin, a starch found in the skeleton of shrimp, crab and other shellfish) — to offer diners novel menu items that may also prove to be beneficial to their health.

Landlubbers get sea legs

Although Americans only recently became interested in the potential health benefits of sea vegetables, the purported healing properties of such sea fare were extolled in ancient Chinese and medieval classics and in medieval Japanese court poetry, according to Carl Karush, marketing director of Maine Coast Sea Vegetables, located in Franklin, Maine. The Chinese Book of Poetry, which dates back to about the year 800 B.C., documents the esteem in which sea vegetables were held, according to The Sea Vegetable Book, written by Judith Cooper Madlener.

Native Americans from Alaska to northern California also incorporated ocean vegetation into their cuisine, says Karush. In native Hawaiian cultures, dulse — a rust-colored, slightly spicy sea vegetable — was a delicacy reserved for royalty. People in Denmark, Ireland, Canada and England have enjoyed the taste of dulse for centuries.

Today, sea vegetables are catching on across the United States, too. Seaweed is "being served in really wonderful places," says Eleanor Lewallen. She attributes the increased use of sea vegetables in restaurants to a growing belief that seaweed may have health-promoting properties. Many sea vegetables have been found to contain algins, which some people believe remove radioactive particles and heavy metals from the body, she says.

Rebecca Katz, managing chef at Raven at the Stanford Inn by the Sea in Mendocino, California, agrees. "People's awareness of what food can do for them is increasing and will only continue to increase," she says.

Some research indicates that consumption of sea vegetables may contribute to Japan's low breast-cancer rate, according to a recent issue of Nutraceuticals World magazine. "When people see [the possible benefits], they get really excited," says Mary Ellen Camire, a professor of food science and nutrition at the University of Maine in Orono. As is the case with many functional foods or nutraceuticals, the benefits of consuming sea vegetables have not been proven, she cautions, but she adds that fans think that sea vegetables can be an important contributor to overall health because of their high mineral, vitamin and protein content.

Odwalla, a Half Moon Bay, California-based premium-juice company, includes dulse from Nova Scotia in "Superfood," one of its nutritional juices. Superfood includes dulse, because the sea vegetable is a good source of vitamins C and B12, iron, zinc, beta carotene, digestible protein, and calcium, according to Odwalla Communications Manager Erin Markey. And customers are drinking it up: Superfood is one of the five best-selling Odwalla juices in the 20 states that market the brand, says Markey.

Fishing for nutritional benefits

Other nontraditional ocean-derived products, such as chitosan and shark cartilage, are being marketed as nutritional supplements. "Shark cartilage and chitosan are emerging markets in the nutritional fields," says Camire. A recent issue of Nutraceuticals World magazine cites studies that reveal chitosan's possible cholesterol-lowering and fat-absorbing properties and shark cartilage's suspected ability to decrease the growth of tumors.

The same magazine issue points to high consumer awareness regarding the health benefits of omega 3 fatty acids, including their ability to reduce triglycerides, a risk factor for heart disease, and the possibility that they can aid brain development. "Omega 3 fatty acids are really hot," says Camire. Omega 3 fatty acids come from oil in fatty fishes such as salmon and mackerel but can also be produced by algae.

Although chitosan, shark cartilage and omega 3 fatty acids are not yet considered gourmet-meal staples by any means, they are being added to food products, says Camire. According to Nutraceuticals World, in Asia omega 3 fatty acids are included in everything from yogurt and milk to noodles. Nestle recently introduced a line of omega 3-enriched milk products in Mexico. And the publication states that here in the United States, OmegaTech of Boulder, Colorado, sells Gold Circle Farms eggs enriched with DHA, which is found in omega 3 fatty acids.

Gourmets catch the wave

Sea vegetables — unlike shark cartilage and chitosan — are beginning to show up in gourmet meals at high-end restaurants around the United States. Katz uses sea vegetables in some of her dishes at the Raven. Sea vegetables may not be something people would cook at home, says Katz, "but if a waitress comes up to them and says, 'This is one of our best dishes,' they'll try it and say, 'This is very good.'"

Sea vegetables aren't sailing onto mainstream menus yet, says Camire. But sea vegetables are definitely becoming more popular, especially through the introduction of nori, which is used in sushi. "You can go buy chips with ginkgo and St. John's wort. Buying chips with seaweed in them is not such a stretch at all," says Camire.

Regardless of seaweed's supposed healthful properties, diners' taste buds can benefit from restaurateurs' experimentation with the briny-tasting greens. Camire describes the taste of most seaweed as salty and somewhat "oceany." Most varieties of seaweed can also absorb the flavor of the other items with which you cook, says Eleanor Lewallen, who co-authored The Sea Vegetable Gourmet Cookbook and Wildcrafter's Guide with her husband. Seaweed can be used in soup, stir-fried or added to bread, while nori can be included in a sushi salad of rice and vegetables, she says.

Hubert Keller, chef at Club 19 restaurant in Pebble Beach, California, uses steamed wild sea beans as a garnish over scallops or other fish dishes. "We like to introduce some ingredients that are new and exciting to the guests," he says. Keller plucks the wild sea beans from local shores during May and June. "They have a lot of flavor on their own," he says and adds that the sea beans enhance entrees in both appearance and taste. "Color-wise, it's really attractive, because it's bright green, and it's really a nice touch. It adds a nice little crunch to the dish. When you bite into it, you really have a sensation of the ocean."

Katz created a "Sea-Palm Strudel" that has become one of the Raven's most popular dishes. She uses locally harvested, fresh sea palm, which is cooked until tender. She then carmelizes the sea palm, separately caramelizes carrots and onions, and rolls it all up into phyllo dough, which she then bakes until it's brown. "It's a great way to introduce people to sea vegetables," she says. Katz also prepares a "Baked Ziti With Black Quinoa," another sea vegetable with a nutty taste and caviar-like appearance.

"The whole key to cooking with sea vegetables is the technique," says Katz. "If you cook them right, they taste incredible." Each vegetable has a slightly different texture, requiring different cooking methods. Sea palm, for example, is tougher and may need to cook longer than the delicate hijiki.

Seaweed-preparation safety precautions are the same as with any vegetable or produce item, says Steven Grover, vice president of the National Restaurant Association's Health and Safety Regulatory Affairs Department. If it's shipped dry, it's not considered potentially hazardous until cooked. Once the seaweed has been cooked, food-prep staff must follow food-safety procedures for holding a hot product at 140 degrees Fahrenheit or above, says Grover. If the product is cooked and then cooled, it must be cooled to 41 degrees Fahrenheit or below and maintained at that temperature, he says.

Restaurant owner and chef James O'Shea uses sea greens in a variety of ways at his Litchfield, Connecticut, restaurant, the West Street Grill. O'Shea, who grew up near the sea in Kenmare in southwestern Ireland, creates seaweed stock by putting kombu stalks into cold water and bringing it up just under a boil. When he removes the kombu, the broth gets a "mild ocean" flavor that is excellent for soups. O'Shea also flash cooks alaria for a simple seaweed salad.

Purported health benefits aside, O'Shea's motive for using sea vegetables is taste. "I really absolutely love the flavor," he says. "I incorporate them into dishes that are very accessible to people," such as "Salmon in a Sea Vegetable Crust." The addition of dulse flakes in the crust "gives it a nutty, briny flavor, so it has an edge to it." Customers "love it."

Food retailers are getting into the aquatic act as well. Maine Coast Sea Vegetables recently introduced "Maine Coast Crunch," a nutritious, slightly sweet snack bar made of kelp. It comes in original sesame and peanut/raisin flavors. Maine Coast Sea Vegetables distributes pre-made seaweed salads to restaurants, but its most popular items are seaweed in flaked and chopped forms, which can be used in soups, salads and stir-fries as a flavor accent or as a garnish, says Karush. "If you [eat] it by itself, it's very strong — really salty — but if you mix it with something else like oatmeal, it loses a lot of its taste," he says.

Tending the underwater garden

"You need a clean ocean to have clean and healthy seaweed. Just like in a garden, you need clean, healthy, unpolluted land to grow really healthy food," says Eleanor Lewallen, who is also involved in ocean-protection activism. Seaweed grown in polluted water can be contaminated by heavy metals or pathogenic bacteria, Camire says. That's why following proper food-safety procedures is so important once the sea vegetables are in the restaurant kitchen.

As with any other natural resource, the ocean is limited, says Nelson Ehrhardt, a professor in the Marine Biology and Fisheries Division at the University of Miami. "The ocean does not have an endless bounty of animals or vegetables. The productivity of the ocean is very limited. It is fragile, and it can be broken down very easily," he says.

Seaweed grows in the shallow waters near the surface where light hits the ocean. Because that area is limited, "the amount of exploitable algae resources is truly limited." And because fish need seaweed for food and hiding places, taking it all away would be irresponsible, Ehrhardt says.

Restaurateurs can encourage responsible harvesting by researching their suppliers' harvesting methods, says John Lewallen. Some questions to ask include: "Do you go to the same locations year after year?" and "Do you pluck the whole plant or leave the part that attaches to the rock so that the plant can continue to grow?" If suppliers come back to the same place year after year, operators can be sure that the seaweed crop is sustainable, he says.

Dive in for a new taste sensation

Restaurateurs may want to add some inventive dishes that incorporate sea vegetables to their menus to reel in adventuresome diners. "People are trying to make the most of our natural and organic resources," says Katz. "What better way than to pull plants from the sea?" In addition, sea vegetables "offer a unique taste; they are good for you and easy to cook."

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