Work trip restaurants have no vegetarian options and I hate fuss

[Clockinginat2pm]

Away abroad with work.
We have clients with us, there’s a few of us flown over.
Activities all organised by head office, lovely, it’s really well organised day & evening.
Restaurants booked for each evening… Smash burger place and steak & fish place x2. Checked out menus and there is zero, and I mean zero vegetarian option on any of the menus at all. Starters/mains ALL meat or fish pf some form. There’s not even any sides (which would usually be more go to)

I do not want to draw ANY attention to myself at all as I am excruciatingly dreading these events as I am introvert, socially extremely anxious and feeling very very out of my depth with it all.

Fade into the background is my main aim..

So, do I order something with meat/fish & just pretend to eat it and be hungry for a few days?

I don’t speak the language, the waiter from last night spoke no English so ringing them to order something else is not an option here at all. (I ended up with an appetiser of grilled asparagus which I couldn’t eat so pushed it around my plate for 40 minutes.

Ive used my emergency pack of biscuits as I was starving.
What would you do in my shoes???

I love Spain and speak Spanish fairly well. We stayed in a little hotel in Galicia. Clearly explained what we ate.

The meal was a vegetable soup. Husband and I tasted it and looked at each other.

Is there any meat in this?
"No, no. Of course not. A little bit of chicken for flavour - but just the breast. And some sausage."

On another occasion, i was at a big gala dinner for a conference. All week there had been little cards for the vegetarians to make serving easier. At the gala dinner there were no cards. It hadn't occurred to them that we would still be vegetarian. I explained - in Spanish - that I couldn't eat the meal. They brought me a plate of tinned peas and carrots.
¿Te gusta?
No, not really

We went on a trip a few years ago staying in paradors for the most part. I had checked sample menus and read gushing reports of fresh vegetarian food. They fibbed.
We did stay in a dusty dark hotel one night which had a random Indian restaurant. I still think it is the best food I ever had!

Im not vegetarian but most of my favourite tapas are often veggie, in central Spain, tapas rules and there are pinxos in some parts of Northern Spain. But outside of big big cities and outside of 'bars' so to speak, a family restaurant is a restaurant and therefore you cant get the little bits and be choosy as much as you can in cities

To get what you need you really need a bar but meat can often crop up in the most unexpected places.

Sorry but this perplexes me. There is zero chance I’d stay hungry when I have access to technology to use the local language to ask for food I can eat

The issue is you can ask but you might get a meaty surprise due to cultural differences. My inlaws think that ham isn't pork so is fine for Jewish visitor. If you aren't obliged to go to pre booked restaurants in a group you can do a supermarket trip and find things or look for a restaurant which specifically has vegetarian options. Or eat tomatoes.

but OP says they are specifically going to a smash burger restaurant.
A restaurant specialising in burgers.

It's not going to serve up literally just one beef patty on a plate and nothing else. No choice, no sides, no toppings.

Even if it doesn't offer a veggie burger the meat burgers will have
A bun = vegetarian.
Choice of toppings, including things like cheese, mushrooms, fried onions = vegetarian.
Some sort of choice of side, whether salad = vegetarian or fries = potato, thus vegetarian, yes possibly cooked in fat but given OP was willing to pick bacon off asparagus she doesn't seem that picky!
Dessert = vegetarian.

Perhaps not the most filling or appetising meal but clearly a meal nonetheless.

I actually have no real idea what a smash burger is...I am off to Google. But I'd skip fried onions in my cheese salad roll!

So you’re suggesting I made that up?

Yes

@desperatemum1234 How long were you in Spain for and where to be so malnourished you vomited blood? No fruit, veg, bread, cakes?!

Seconded.

Lo siento, no como carne. ¿Podría decirme qué alimentos no contienen carne ni jamón? ¿O podría prepararme algo?

Gracias.

The stuff around the asparagus would have been ham.

Look for some options like, chickpeas (garbanzos) tortilla with potato (tortilla de patatas). There will be other things even if Northern Spain is often meat or fish heavy.

Just remember if asking to say "sin jamon" to make it clear there is no ham in the dish.

But I'm REALLY surprised you can't find an English speaker in every restaurant in Northern Spain.

Oh and Spanish is one of the EASIEST languages to pick up a few words.

Sin = without
Con = with

Words for meat are pretty obvious. "Carne" = meat (like carnivore as it comes from the same root. Pronounced "car-nay"). "Jamon" = ham (pronounced "ham-on"), "pollo" = chicken (like "poultry"). Literally you could do a couple of lessons with duolingo or look at a phrase book and be able to make yourself understood EVEN IF GOOGLE TRANSLATE WASN'T A THING! (But it is!)

So Op, much as I don't want to be rude, either eat the meat or ask nicely. Neither is "making a fuss". But stop whinging and take some control here.

She did, but I got the impression that this would've been a last resort, a compromise meaning she could eat something without making a huge fuss, rather than something she was actually happy with. A couple of other points about that is, if a vegan/vegetarian was served a plate of asparagus (or any other given dish they're happy to eat), that a piece of ham or similar had touched, it is unlikely they'd notice. Asparagus being relatively dry as is the ham, It doesn't tend to leave residue or scent providing it isn't greasy. The asparagus likely wouldn't taste like ham.

Not the case if something has been fried in dripping etc. It literally reeks of meat and tastes meaty. I know which I would cope better with, morals aside.

Spanish 'tomato salads' are tomatoes, at least a lot of the time. As in a plate of (sometimes different types of) tomatoes.

It sounds as if the OP has done this more than once or twice before and there hasn't ever been a problem because the organisers haev considered (her) dietary needs, this is the first time it has failed. If something hasn't caused an issue for you before, it is reasonable to not predict that it will do the next time.

As I have said on a few posts on this thread, I have had extreme food anxiety in the past, but I do not have social anxiety, far from it. They can be two very different animals IME.

She did, but I got the impression that this would've been a last resort, a compromise meaning she could eat something without making a huge fuss, rather than something she was actually happy with

How on earth is asking for vegetarian modification “making a huge fuss”?

Sure, if you burst into the restaurant, and start screaming that they are fucking dickheads, the menu is shit and they better make you a vegetarian meal, then I agree, that is a huge fuss.

However, if you act like a normal human being, and at the outset politely ask if they can cater a vegetarian option, it’s a) no fuss whatsoever, and b) most places are happy to do so.

From the perception of someone in rural Spain, it can be.

They have often never heard of vegetarianism or if they have, they think it is a bizarre, idiotic and/or very misguided concept. Someone who's afraid of meat or has something wrong with them. Combine this with a lot of the elder generation of traditional Spanish restaurant owners being staunchly proud of their food, and they can take it as a massive, rude rejection ask me how I know . It's understandable, It's their tradition, and they cannot fathom that someone wouldn't want to eat their lovingly prepared food and that there must be something very wrong with the person who doesn't want to eat meat.

Conversely, SOME of them who aren't as militant about meat and are more about the customer service, go miles out of their way to prepare something but they just don't 'get' it. A PP has mentioned such an encounter 'No, no meat in this soup, just a bit of chicken and sausage'. That to them isn't 'meat', because it isn't a lump of flesh.

And then if they prepare something that they think is okay, that you still can't eat, you feel like a complete and utter arsehole. This has also happened to me (in Majorca nonetheless)!

Invited to family friend's house for snacks and wine. I had said I did not want anything food wise, I didn't eat animal products and I know that is unusual (I was a vegan and it was 12 years ago, not even so mainstream in England let alone anywhere else). Told her I was more than happy with a glass of wine and some crips (which I brought).
When I got there she'd prepared lots of fish and cheese dishes for me. Which I had to reject, I felt awful as she was elderly and she was so happy with herself for finding something I could eat. It happens. It might not be a 'huge fuss' but it can easily turn into one with cultural differences present.

@midlander79 At risk of stating the obvious, someone running a smash burger place isn't going to be one of the elder generation of traditional Spanish restaurant owners who's staunchly proud of their traditional food. If they're familiar enough with modern food trends to have opened a reputed smash burger place then they've sure as hell heard of vegetarianism!

I looked at local smash burger places...I am not in Spain or GB but most places around us have a vegetarian option. Smash burgers certainly don't have anything not meaty on menus except onion rings.
They might do something if someone in a group asked i suppose...but no guarantee. Where I am there's always something in posher places, vegetarian and vegan and gluten free.

Definitely, I was responding to the theme of the thread of posters saying about Spanish restaurants in general, that they'll all be accommodating and it isn't a huge fuss etc etc.To some of those traditional people and restaurants, it is unheard of!

I don't know what a 'smash burger' is, let alone a Spanish version of one. But I do stand by that in Spain, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that any chips and sides wouldn't be vegetarian in any sort of burger place. Very likely fried in beef fat, beef stock used etc. It just isn't like here where we largely avoid that unless it is used as a feature of the dish.

That makes sense, thanks @midlander79 . I would say though – there are still a fair few chippies in the UK that use beef dripping, and they're disproportionately likely to be the ones that get good reviews and that I'd take visitors to. Unless I'm aware that they're vegetarian, of course!

The one thing you can always get is bread and generally you can get a cheese plate across northern Spain. We travelled across last year from the Portuguese border to Bilbao stopping in 5 places and you could cobble together a meal (I do each meat but was under the weather and couldn’t really face it for some reason). I managed to get cheese and mushroom omelette in one place, a cheese platter in another, mixed tapas in another including these blue cheese stuffed dumplings a speciality to that specific town. Chips were not cooked in animal fat as far as I recall, but only Bilbao had tapas as we think of it in the U.K. veggie paella was available in a couple of places. BUT in several places only one restaurant was open, was October and thus out of season

I also speak Spanish and lived there for a bit for uni. This is entirely accurate. I'm not a veggie but I've had many an occasion where the "potato" croquetas arrived with ham in them or the tomato salad has tuna in it.

Blimey though, whether it's hard and some Spaniards make a mistake or not. If the Op isn't prepared to use her actual people words, find someone who speaks English (which let's face it, is pretty common in nearly all of Spain) or use Google Translate because it's all such a huge stress, then sack off dinner, walk down to a supermarket and get some (really good) cheese and fruit FFS!

I'd still find it much easier to ask in a restaurant than sack off my colleagues who are far more likely to be offended but if the Op is that adamant it's "fuss" then I don't see her solution apart from just eating what she's given.

If someone has been a vegetarian for many years eating what you are given can make you ill which isn't ideal on a work trip.
Bilbao chefs are more likely to be creative in my experience!

Then the op needs to use her words... not whinge online...