To feel that restaurants should provide more vegetarian options ?

[Lovelybangers]

Maybe to some people I am BU - but since quitting meat I have noticed that many menus have a very limited selection of non meat/fish options.

I was out this weekend for a family meal ( restaurant chosen by someone else) and the menu had 6 starters, 6 mains to choose from Only 2 starters were suitable and 1 main course.

I am certain that it can't be so difficult to add another choice - the main course option was very mushroomy - so if I didn't like mushrooms then I would have been going hungry.

DH was happy as he got to eat a big plate of roast beef - despite him being happy to share my veggie offerings at home.

I was just perusing a few local eateries' christmas menus -and many of them don't have ANY option for non flesh eaters.

A veggie restaurant opened near my parents. Affluent, slightly alternative, home counties. It lasted 5 months.

Fil is gluten free (not coeliac). He complains about the lack of gluten free.

Sil is allergic to dairy and eggs. She bemoans the lack of options.

Chefs can't win. They can't provide choice for all diets. So they cater for the majority with some options for the minority.

BakeOffBiscuits Are you sure people who may eat less meat at home would actually choose not to eat meat when they eat out in restaurants? The OP's DH is a vegetarian at home maybe reluctantly but not when he eats out. I know other households like this....

There are lots of new restaurants opening up where I live, none of which are known for their vegetarian options (some the total opposite), and they all seem to be doing ok.

I find there are few vegetarian options but even less (if any) vegan options

More veggie options would be good, or even their main dishes being the same but one has an option for quorn not real meat.
I do eat meat but am incredibly fussy, and i dislike ordering meat in restaurants because i can't stand fat and gristle, the look if it makes me feel ill and puts me off eating.
At home i enjoy steak, but i'm very particular about picking a piece in the shop, 90% of the m i wouldn't eat.. In a restaurant they just pick a piece for you, and half of it is usually inedible bits of gristle and fat running right through the middle, its disgusting. I don't eat pork or lamb, i hate mince, i typically only eat chicken breast. Anything burger or sausage is out, and i only eat white fish. The restaurant my dad and sister always pick because they like the giant deserts bar, has nothing on the main courses menu that i like. I've tried their vegetarian special, "loaded cheesy nachos" it was a pack of the cheapest, nastiest shops own tortilla chips (30p in tesco) with big dollops of salsa, guacamole and sour cream on top, none of which i like but covering every single tortilla, and the cheese was he barrenest sprinkle of grated cheese. I was expcting decent torillas, covered in cheese, with the dips in bowls, i didn't eat any of it.

Worth remembering though some restaurants have small kitchens, and simply don't have the space to prepare several none meat meals, as to be labelled vegetarian it can't come into contact with utensils, surfaces etc used to prepare or cook meat. If 90% of their custom, typically more, is ordering meat meals, they usually have to select only one or two easy to make veggie meals that doesn't need lots of prep space as it has to be prepped totally separately. I agree though it sucks its almost always plain pasta in a bland tomato sauce or something mushroom based, as i also like neither.

would love to see more veggie rounds on masterchef too.

There was a chef who cooked a vegetarian dish in Masterchef tonight. The judges called him "brave".

Veggie options are always really overpriced. Per kg meat and fish are a lot more expensive than vegetables, rice, pasta etc, so £7+ a dish is fair i guess, but they charge virtually the same price for the veggie options too which are much cheaper to make and usually smaller portions too.

YANBU

I have been veggie for 20 years and sometimes they veggie menu offering is pathetic. I particularly hate it when you get a separate "menu" but it's actually an A5 piece of paper with still only one option for starter and main.

MissVictoria That's a good point -about the quality of the meat in a restaurant being not up to standard. At least if you buy and cook it yourself you have some control over that.

When I ate meat I wasn't so bothered - I'd eat the fatty bits etc. DH however will pick apart every tiny morsel of fat, or anything which might look like fat.

bugger - if you're full every night, you can't be doing much wrong! If meat is your market, and you don't need the veggie pound, that's fair enough. Power to your elbow!

I suspect - and this is totally unscientific and anecdotal - that there are three main groups of vegetarians in Britain. The first is teenagers and young people up to the age of about 25. The second is people who are veggie for religious reasons who come from BAME communities. The third is fairly wealthy, lower to upper middle class liberal types, who have an ecofriendly and often slightly hippy attitude. The first group probably doesn't have much disposable income (generalising wildly), the second and especially the third have quite a lot and eat out quite a bit as well (again, scarily broad generalisation). (For the record, I am a non-hippy working class girl who now exists in a solidly middle class world!)

I think this leads to a kind of fragmented market for veggie food, which is probably quite difficult for restaurants to serve. Thinking about it, my own choices about where to eat are really shaped by this. For instance, I will probably eat out in two main groups of restaurants: great, everyday ones where a main is under £20, and high end ones. I'm unlikely to dine out in the middle, so I very rarely eat anywhere where mains cost £30-45. That's because those kinds of restaurants often offer only limited choices for me as a veggie, and I really resent that when I'm paying a bit more. If I'm paying £35 a main I do not want a bowl of bloody pasta - I can go to the Pastaria round the corner and get a gorgeous bowl of it for £15! So if I'm going to splurge, rather than paying £10 for a starter and £40 for a main, I'm probably just going to go for a multiple-course tasting menu at a restaurant that has rave reviews or a star at £80 and get something absolutely amazing. My local restaurant has decentish reviews for the city, but I've never been because why would I pay £55 a head for something good, when I can pay £80 a head for something utterly memorable? It makes no sense to do that.

(I'm outside of London, so things are cheaper here!)

On the 'veggie mains are overpriced' thing - I think they often are, but not because you should pay less for the ingredients. As someone explained to me on another thread, most of the cost is in the labour and chef time! The reason they are overpriced is that they're often just poorly conceived and poorly executed. Unlike that tomato dish on Masterchef last night -I'd happily eat something like that for breakfast, dinner or me tea!

Im not vegetarian but I quite often choose veggie option on a menu if it sounds good. Sadly not many places have interesting and tasty sounding veggie options. I would probably choose veggie meal 80% time if there were better choices.

It's frustrating.
Dd was vegetarian last year and got very fed up of the poor selection in most of the restaurants we visited. Middle of the road type places, not high end Michelin starred nor Beefeater types. We'd often end up concocting a meal from various sides listed to go with meat dishes, luckily places were accommodating to this.

When I was a veggie (I'm not now!) I went to Heston's pub The Hind's Head in Bray. I phoned beforehand and explained I was veggie and asked if there was something I could eat - I was reassured that the menu was packed full of interesting veggie food.... so my choice was limited to a tiny goats cheese tart, followed by a lemon salad - the lemon salad was accompanied with fish on the menu but the veggie version just had leaves and some lemon oil, it was a miserable offering. Thankfully they had some chips available for munching. I did feel a bit annoyed at the dishonesty but when you are are eating out with others you can't just get up and leave and you have to just put up with second class food...but I'll always make my experience known on Tripadvisor - just to warn other diners.

Limited choice also makes dining out just not worth it for vegetarian couples or families. Me and DH, plus one DC are vegetarian and there's no pleasure in dining out when three of the five of us are forced to eat the same meal.

The irony of those saying that they go to Indian restaurants in order to accommodate vegetarians...
Indian restaurants will almost exclusively use low welfare halal meat, probably imported, which is about as bad as it gets for animal welfare
So for the sake of the vegetarian getting some 'interesting' food, all the meat eaters in the group will be supporting utter misery for the animals that made their meals

spare that's a very sweeping generalisation and certainly not true for the India restaurant we go to.

This is why I gave up being vegan. Made eating away from home very difficult. But all the vegans I know who do socialise in eateries with friends, just seem to put up with having to eat chips, or baked potato, while everyone else is eating something nice.

Try being coeliac I would be happy with one choice on a menu but have walked streets looking for somewhere that can feed my coeliac daughter and those that can generally only offer plain chicken, potatoes and veg and cannot guarantee no risk of cross contamination.

The thing I've found is that with Indian food, most people like to share. So many meat-eaters are really happy to get a whole range of vegetarian dishes to share as a table, and skip the meat. Even committed carnivores like my PIL do this regularly when we are out because they would genuinely rather have a range of dishes. It's nice to share.

To me, as someone who doens't eat it, welfare standards around meat are between the meat eater and their conscience. It's not like anyone's forcing them to have the lamb biriyani.

I hate sharing.
Veggie food can be delicious, but rarely is in restaurants. That is why only vegetarians eat it. If it was actually tasty, many meat eaters would order it too.

I've been a vegetarian for almost 30 years and things have really improved since I first stopped eating meat. Personally I am happy with one good option on a menu, provided it is a well thought through meal in itself with a decent balance of protein, carbs and veg (rather than something like a chicken stir fry without the meat or as other posters have said, pasta and tomato sauce).

The only time I've been really unhappy was when a pub offered a vegetarian Sunday roast and it turned out to be a dish of potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding, roast carrots and parsnips. When I complained, the response was "but we gave you extra parsnips"!

I agree dulra. My ds who is allergic to wheat and dairy usually has zero choice in most places unless he wants a plain undressed salad. Even one suitable starter and one main would be a massive improvement. And let's not even mention desserts, I am yet to go to any restaurant that can provide a wheat and dairy free dessert.

Wheat avoidance is easy compared to dairy

Pubs are the worst. Our local one does a pizza night so we went and there wasn't any vegetarian option, not even margarita. The only veggie option was quorn main course (yuk).

I queried it and was told no... so ordered shepherds pie, to which the bar manager said "so what's the problem then if you are not vegetarian?".

I just don't always have to eat meat. I actually really really like vegetarian food.

But her response says it all really.

We did vote with our wallets and haven't been back.

OP I don't think YABU.

I've been a veggie for 30 years. Yes the offering has improved, but if there is just one veggie item on the menu and you don't like it then it's pants.

I think I am the only veggie who doesn't like mushrooms! Imagine the fun I have