For Lou Reed's Chefs, a Walk on the Mild Side For a handful of chefs and restaurateurs in downtown Manhattan, Lou Reed, the iconic New Yorker and rock pioneer who died of liver disease on Sunday at age 71, was more than just the man associated with songs like "Heroin," "Sweet Jane" and "Satellite of Love." He was a devoted customer, and they spent years trying to keep him in good health. Reika Alexander, an owner of EN Japanese Brasserie in the West Village, remembers meeting the force behind the Velvet Underground not long after the restaurant opened, in 2004. At first he was drawn to beef and fried chicken, but at a certain point Mr. Reed let Mrs. Alexander know that he had been diagnosed with diabetes. "He needed to change his diet," she said. "He was saying, "I can't eat this anymore, I can't eat that anymore.'" Mrs. Alexander bought some books about diabetes and plunged into research. "I think food can heal people," she said. She and the team at EN, led by the chef Abe Hiroki, wound up devising a menu for the musician, one that eliminated sugar and stressed grilled fish, grilled chicken, salads, vegetables and house-made tofu. "We created some menus just for Lou, really," Mrs. Alexander said. Before long, Mr. Reed made a request: he wondered whether EN could deliver lunch and dinner to him on a regular basis. The restaurant complied. On many days when he was in New York, sometimes twice a day, a meal from EN would be cooked and sent to him. Mr. Reed had a classically New York stance when it came to fame. There are countless downtown anecdotes from regular people in the city who happened to stand next to him once at an art gallery, a movie theater or a bookshop. Now and then Mr. Reed could be spotted at a small table in a back corner behind the sushi bar at Ichimura at Brushstroke, in TriBeCa. He took part in an ongoing dialogue about food and health with David Bouley, the chef and restaurateur behind Brushstroke and Bouley, where Mr. Reed had been a patron since the late 1980s. Over time, Mr. Bouley and Brushstroke's Isao Yamada became determined to make dishes that adhered to Mr. Reed's dietary restrictions. "There was one dessert he really loved, and I would make it for him," Mr. Bouley said. Served in different variations at Bouley and Brushstroke, it was a parfait made by squeezing the juice from citrus fruit (clementines and tangerines, for instance), thickening it with a Japanese starch called kuzu and topping it with a quenelle of lychee sorbet. Sweetness came from the fruit, not from added sugar. "I told him, "Lou, you're still crossing over to the wild side and having dessert,'" Mr. Bouley said. He wouldn't have one. He would have two. Eventually, of course, the people who cooked for Mr. Reed got to know him in a way that other New Yorkers never could. "Even a couple of weeks ago he told me that he loved eating our food because it made him feel really healthy," Mrs. Alexander said, recalling a strong final hug with a man who whose prickliness became legendary. He was really sweet. I really miss him. I was hoping I could see him again.