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 have been in several parts of Spain where there has been no English spoken at all.

Now that we know where the OP is it isn't surprising that no butter is served with the bread as it is usually used to mop up the juices on the plate.

@Clockinginat2pm google translate is your friend.

Well as I said @RampantIvy and you've pointed out, google translate is there and as Spanish has the same roots in Latin for a lot of words (like French, Italian and lots of English words) it's really not hard to work out.

I have a severe anxiety disorder but even I'm thinking this Op needs to grow some balls here. Come on. Try!

Same here. Certainly not enough to have a clear discussion about what Spanish people consider to be meat or not. I wouldn't expect it either. But the cards mentioned upthread looked helpful and some online research would be worthwhile for anyone with a dietary requirement into what the lay of the land is in relation to the situation where they are going. You can't just assume that food available and information about it is the same everywhere.

It's already been said that 'ensalada mixta' usually includes tuna, as well as lettuce, carrots, corn and onions, Russian salad is also common, which is effectively potato salad with tuna and egg in.

Wow what an unpleasant bunch you are @Mumsntfan1 @PoppinjayPolly @Damnloginpopup - your nastiness is everything that’s wrong with Mumsnet.
Thankfully a fact remains true whether or not rude nasty Mumsnet posters such as yourselves believe it. In hospital I was put on a nutrient drip.
Have a great day.

Ridiculous honestly I'm perplexed. I've travelled around Spain as a Vegetarian/pescararian for well over 20 probably 30 years. Just say sin carne. It means without meat and is basically shorthand for vegetarian. Sin pesce means without fish it's not hard it's really easy and the Spanish are lovely about it. They'll find you lentil and bean stews gorgeous salads and vegetarian tapas. If you left Spain malnourished then that's 100% on you how unfathomably ignorant to fail to learn two or three words.

I'm a vegetarian. I would probably say, I'm going to eat separately and join you guys for dessert after. But then I'd far prefer to eat on my own!

I've visited Spain a lot. Always ate well.

I just don't understand how, as I am also a vegetarian, and was fine in Spain on least 4 trips. Maybe not as much choice as I'd like but enough to get by. And there are supermarkets too of course.

Having travelled around Andalucia off the beaten track I'm inclined to believe that it is more difficult in parts of Spain to eat genuinely vegetarian food in restaurants.

I feel for the OP, but I would have been open about the fact that I was vegetarian and asked for help. I certainly wouldn't have ordered a meal and not eaten it as that would probably have drawn more attention to me than just asking for something containing no meat or fish.

I think it depends where you are. I've really struggled to find vegetarian food in some parts of Spain. Had a similar experience to OP on a work trip in Spain years ago. Colleagues I was with knew I was vegetarian and I speak Spanish and was able to explain at restaurants but the restaurants just couldn't/wouldn't cater for me. I'd get random plates of one vegetable (big pile of green peppers with nothing else).

I went on a school exchange trip with the British Council to Czech Republic (before it became Czechia). I had given my dietary requirements as vegetarian. In a moderately sized town, I was served a dish with ham. I reiterated I was vegetarian. I was told yes, that’s the vegetarian option 🤣 As it had no beef/lamb.

So what happened?! Were you stuck there for a long time and unable to access alternative food stuffs?

We often go to Spain with my vegetarian uncle, and it can be pretty hard work to find places he can eat but obviously we try our very best and he usually manages to get some veggies, some bread and some cheese, even if we don't manage to get a full meal in normal meal form for him. So I guess I am just confused in terms of how this would happen?

Padron peppers?

I realise the op isn't in the more "tapas" part of Spain but there are loads of incidentally vegetarian tapas dishes, some of which make it onto menus elsewhere. Padron peppers being one.

I know that Spanish people can be awkward on vegetarianism but I still don't understand how hard it is to say "sin carne, sin pesce, sin jamon por favor" or use google translate. It's not hard to try. The Op seems to want someone to come over and wave a magic wand for her. And bizarrely there seem to be no English speakers anywhere.

If the OP is still reading I do understand the level of stress involved. I used to be quite thin and my reaction to stress is to find it hard to eat.

Back in the 80s /90s on group meals the veggie option would often come out last, when others had eaten most of their meal. I'd end up with loads of people looking and communicating whilst trying to eat a huge portion. Horrible experience that left me unable to eat after a few bites, then getting more comments about how little I'd eaten.

The way I found to deal with it was to just decide to nit care - I would eat what I wanted then just stop and say "oh I'm not very hungry". Massively reduced my stress which then made eating easier.

Bigger towns and cities in Spain can have dedicated vegetarian restaurants - however they can be very much on old fashioned hippie side of things, lots of pulses and brown rice.

Spain and France can be a bit like the UK was in the seventies in their aporoach to vegetarianism seeing it as a cranky alternative lifestyle choice that is catered for separately rather than a mainstream food preference.

Where in the world are you if they have absolutely no vegetarian options?

I think it's Northern Spain. Would be easy if looking for pescatarian but not vegetarian. However, English is spoken pretty widely unless in very rural areas and as people have pointed out, a lot, google translate is your friend. You could even translate using AI to Galician or Basque if in those regions (they've not specified).

They've also not explained why buying some food from a supermarket and skipping dinner is out of the question either.

It's all rather baffling.

It's all rather poor me victim mode once you look at it through that lens it makes more sense

I've had this too (the pile of peppers). I wonder if they think 'vegetarian' means you only eat vegetables, literally, or that you're on a diet.

Then again, I asked for a vegan version of a starter once, when out with two friends who had ordered a sharer platter (meat, cheese and breads) in a quite upmarket Italian in a UK city. I was given a plate of salad leaves. Baffling, when they had loads of interesting breads, avocado, artichokes, olives etc that they could've served.

It's more of a philosophical issue, I think. Vegetables are either integrally part of a meat dish, or sides and/or a vegetarian diet codes as something to do with healthfood or weightloss. For a long time in France, vegetarian restaurants were very rare and where they existed (in Paris), were seen as cuisine minceur. (I remember once going to one near Opéra and it was full of stick-thin older Frenchwomen eating undressed salads, with little dogs under the table.

We have good, foodie French friends we visit often who explained vegetarianism carefully to their caterers when they got married, and suggested recipes etc. What we got was a delicious, but deeply odd, platter with a big empty space (where the meat 'should' be) in the middle, and a number of tiny portions of vegetable side dishes arranged around the rim -- a thimble-sized pommes dauphinoise, a few artfully arranged haricots verts with almonds, a sort of reduction of ratatouille, a little salad etc.

It was fine!

They bought out these HUGE hunks of meat, which everyone really enjoyed but they also bought out shared sides so potatoes and salad so I had a lovely dinner of salad, spuds, bread & olive oil. Was perfect for me!

Didn’t join in last night as it was burgers and meats with no sides like that offered at all, made a credible excuse and found a supermarket with a bit more choice.

And no I don’t want anyone to come and wave a magic wand for me and no I won’t “stop being a vegetarian for the day” and no I’m not being “poor me” and no I’m not a fucking wet blanket and yes I will be letting them know when I get back and yes I can speak up first myself and yes, it’s the first time its happened as I can always, without exception find something lovely on every menu in every country in every type of restaurant usually with zero fuss, zero attention and I eat very well.

It’s been quite the experience!

Glad all went well! In some countries it's hard to be a vegetarian but things are slowly changing...

Glad you got something nice to eat.
Have to get some protein down you when you get home!

OP updated on Wednesday.

It’s Northern Spain with great pride in their meats and fish dishes. You can see the pride in their menus and descriptions.

but chips are often not veggie, and at least in more rural France, many salads have random bits of meat chucked in (a bit like bacon bits I suppose)
It really is quite hard, and no-one wants to be arguing with the waiter.