Feeding a Vegetarian

I am a vegetarian. There are probably many people who do not know this about me as I do not make a big fuss. it is a choice I have made and it is up to each individual to make their own food choices. If I’m at someone’s house I do not expect them to cater to my needs, after all I will not become sick if I miss a meal or eat meat. But when I am paying for my meal I expect to be able to eat an enjoyable meal.

I do all the cooking at home and find it no problem to provide a variety of meals with no meat so why is it so hard for some restaurants to come up with one meal. We go out to eat once or twice a week and although we both have input into where we eat, a return trip to a restaurant will depend on MY experience.

I have found that Italian and Mexican restaurants are reliable choices as they have plenty of non-meat options on their regular menu. A number of times we have been to a new restaurant and my husband will ask me if there is anything I can eat, which is a good indicator that he hasn’t spotted anything without meat. Sometimes this isn’t a problem because the options are in a different section but quite often there isn’t a choice. Why is this? To me it indicates lack of imagination by the chef. So in those places my husband better stick to a burger as that is about the level of the kitchen.

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to a pub further inland expecting the only option to be a veggie burger – as an aside I hate veggie burger offerings at restaurants, they are usually dry and cold because they haven’t been heated properly – yes I'm paying for something you can't be bothered to cook properly - anyway at this particular pub there were two vegetarian options and a vegan option, not one of them a veggie burger. I asked the wait staff to pass on to the chef how impressed I was that there were choices.

I have had a couple of bad experiences. At one local restaurant I asked if they had anything without meat because there was nothing on the menu, their option – a grilled cheese sandwich – I do not go out to dinner to eat grilled cheese. Interestingly this place was quite empty, I believe it caters to the early crowd and they have not considered changing their menu to draw in patrons in the middle of the evening. This is a nice restaurant but I’d rather eat at the dive bar which has good food that does not contain meat.

In conclusion, my message to chefs, if you wish to attract customers by your menu include vegetarian options, not only will you attract the non-meat eaters but you are showing that you have imagination in the kitchen.