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.

I'll see your wheat free and raise you wheat free and vegetarian.

(someone who I know who finds eating out complicated)

I am a meat-eater but often opt for veggie meals if they sound nice - I love butternut squash, mushrooms, goats cheese, halloumi, falafel, aubergines - and would be happy to see more decent meat-free options.

I do kind of think though that if someone opts to be vegetarian but doesn't like a common vegetable, that's kind of their problem!

shovetheholly

You suspect you're absolutely right about the fragmented market amd the middle group probably aren't especially adventurous with where they eat - for good reason. Countries with a large number of veggies for religious reasons, tend to make lovely food without meat.

£40 on a delicious cut of meat as well as sauce, sides etc can be good value but has to be extremely special (like L'Eclume) to be worth it for cheaper goods like vegetables. Honestly, £15 for a veg. pasta would make me squint a little. I'm well aware of the fact that the price of a dish isn't only based on the cost of raw ingredients but that stills eems steep.

"sparechange"

Bloody tasty though, isn't it!

I also don't know what you're basing it on. I know our local Indian isn't Halal and also know the farmer who supplies the lamb.

re. Indian food. I don't think I've ever had a vegetarian meal but many of the veg dishes are equally as good as the meat ones. It's probably more habit than anything else I'll order veg dishes as well as lamb dansac or bhuna. or madras. or tandoori. Perhaps biriani... How long until lunch?

sixisthemagicnumber

"I am yet to go to any restaurant that can provide a wheat and dairy free dessert."

I'm a better than average home cook but don't profess to be more. I can't think of a single idea beyond a melon boat. All the good pudding ingredients are dairy or wheat based.

I'd like to see much more offered in the way of GF. It's shocking what I have to go through every time I eat out

Less than half of 1% of the UK are coeliac, so only one in every 200 customers are going to need gluten free food. I think the availability is quite impressive given how strict the kitchen needs to be to avoid cross contamination. It adds to costs and its for a tiny minority.
Lets not get into the "I'm gluten intolerant until I really want dessert" idiots who spoil it for the people who really need gluten free!

Lots of options for wheat and dairy free just google paleo desserts

bugger I cook wheat and dairy free desserts at home using substitute ingredients. It really isn't hard to make a gluten and dairy free dessert and they can be quite delicious. My son likes my free from peach cobbler, free from Apple crumble and free from pineapple upside down cake. It actually would t be that difficult for restaurants to make a batch of free from desserts and keep them in the freezer to be heated upon request. Obviously if you go to a restaurant you prefer things freshly made but when you have allergies to deal with you can't afford to be that fussy.

spartacus I reckon I could just about manage wheat free and vegetarian but wheat free and dairy free is really hard because restaurants like to use cheese and other dairy ingredients to try and compensate for the dryness of the wheat free ingredients. Now wheat free and vegan must be really hard.

Yes, there are lots of option stately but you don't get them in restaurants.

And there is huge cross contamination risk navy. So many restaurants use the same fryers and oil for different things so even when you check the ingredients you still have to check the cooking method and ask about possible cross contamination risks. I avoid all gluten with ds even though he was only allergy tested for wheat and not gluten because when he has vinegar for example he gets a rash and a runny sore tummy. But I can only officially say he has wheat and dairy allergy because that is what he tested positive for (and he is so severe that he needs an epi pen and has had to use it on several occasions).

I know Six I should have said that comment was in reply to to Bugger who said

Today 09:40 buggerForTheBottle

sixisthemagicnumber

"I am yet to go to any restaurant that can provide a wheat and dairy free dessert."

I'm a better than average home cook but don't profess to be more. I can't think of a single idea beyond a melon boat. All the good pudding ingredients are dairy or wheat based.

They are commercial operations, not a public service.

YABVU

Sixisthemagicnumber

I wonder though, if people would be happy with a defrosted desert when other people are getting delicious and fresh alternatives. Perhaps at cheaper places but not when you're paying a tenner for it.

Besides that, the cost of 'Free from' stuff is crazy. It doesn't taste as good and it could double the prep time.

To the pp looking for a dairy free gluten free pudding? Try looking up chocolate avocado cake - sounds disgusting but it looks really nice and it's dairy, gluten, nut and egg free (I think )

Some people wouldn't be happy bugger but my ds wouldnt be bothered. He has had too many years of having no dessert (none of us eat desserts in restaurants because we won't leave him out on his own) so anything would be an improvement. I do wonder though how many desserts are actually made fresh when ordered? I'm pretty sure that lots of restaurants do freeze things like apple crumble and some even buy gateau frozen. I'm not talking about top end restaurants, more family friendly restaurants where I take the kids. If I go out for a meal with just DH or my friends then j would choose the sort of place where I expect everything to be fresh although I'm sure that sometimes it isn't all fresh at all.

Going through the rigmarole of cross contamination and being satisfied that they understand the severity of it is bad enough but I don't think the choice is huge at all

Of course the choice isn't going to be huge. A decent restaurant will have maybe 5 main courses to choose from, if one is vegetarian, and one is gluten free or can be made as gluten free, that is two tiny minorities being well provided for.How many choices do you expect there to be for 0.5% of their customers?

Well one choice would be nice user for my gluten and dairy free ds. Just one.
The same rule applies to those with allergies as it does to vegetarians - they might only be a small percentage of the overall population but they don't go out to eat alone. Even the supermarkets have cottoned onto the fact that free from food is big business. And people with allergies / intolerances haven't chosen their restrictive diets.

YABU. It's not a money spinner and restaurants are businesses.

Wheat free is very different to strict gluten free coeliac where even a crumb can make her violently Ill and damage her intestine. Lots of places offer gluten or wheat free but say it's not suitable for coeliacs because it was made in a kitchen that handles other gluten products so is at risk of cross contamination.

You would think so wouldn't you dulra but a single crumb could kill my son within minutes due to anaphylactic shock. Most people diagnosed as having wheat allergy also have problems with gluten but I'm not sure that there is an accurate test yet which shows up full blown gluten allergy rather than "just wheat". Obviously you can test for coeliac which is an auto immune disease (and some people diagnosed wheat allergy may also have) rather than an allergy but you can't test with somebody who is ana to wheat as they would need to consume gluten for traditional coeliac testing and they can't because it would kill them.

I probably wasn't very clear in that post dulra.
Basically an allergy is an auto immune response and those with severe allergies are highly likely to have faulty immune systems and therefore a person who has severe wheat allergy is highly likely to have coeliac disease but it is too risky to test them for it using the traditional gut biopsy method as this requires gluten consumption and you could cause anaphylaxis by consuming gluten so you can't risk that. Even a single salt and vinegar crisp could kill my son within minutes so there is no way we would knowingly risk eating anything with gluten. We have discussed this with consultants but the risks are Too high for testing (we can't do blood tests for coeliac as my son is too atopic for blood tests apparently). And what would we benefit from a positive test? Free prescriptions is the only thing that springs to mind (you can't get Gf food on prescription for even severe allergies) but we have managed without them so far and will Continue to do so.

I am currently trying to eat less meat, no meat at all would be ultimate goal but I'm not quite there yet. I have noticed that the veggie options at restaurants are still very limited. My DH and I like eating at really good restaurants when we can and I'm constantly surprised that even very high end restaurants only have a crappy pasta type dish as a vegetarian option, even if it is artisan handmade pasta with gold flecked truffles on it, it's still just starchy pasta to me!

I can only hope that the numbers of vegetarians will increase to a critical mass in the future so that vegetarian food becomes the norm, not the minority alternative.

Sixisthemagicnumber if your son is reacting to vinegar then gluten is a more likely culprit: vinegar is usually barley malt, and contains gluten.