To be disappointed with a veggie only menu?

[Chewbecca]

We booked an event at our local wine shop ‘summer Mediterranean supper club’. £45 for 3 courses including paired wines. Menu tba.

Event is tomorrow and the menu has arrived today and it is 100% veggie. I do enjoy veggie food but can’t help but feel a bit ‘short changed’ and my committed meat eater DH is really unimpressed.

It is a fab venue with great owners that always put on a good evening.

AIBU to be disappointed?
Would you tell the venue you were a bit disappointed?
If you would, how would you say it, terribly nicely?

Thanks.

That menu sounds shite. Except the Arancini, maybe. I don’t think you are disappointed that it is veggie OP, just disappointed that it is soooooo boring.

What's the problem with having one vegetarian evening?

Because lots of people like meat and fish and if it was advertised as a completely vegetarian menu it would have given people the choice whether to go or not.

If you say the menu arrived, I assume it’s by email? In which case, you can reply and say ‘hi there, looking forward to the evening! I was sent the vegetarian menu by mistake by the way, do you mind sending the regular one?’type message! That way you’ll feel like you’ll have made your point, but without being awkward? If they reply and say ‘oh, that is the main menu’ then you can just be like ‘Oh, ok, thank you!’! Xx

I do think the feta cheesecake is a risky main course. I wonder what they are serving it with?

I'd be grumpy about this because
a) vegetarian options are often cheaper and ime, unless you go somewhere that's very experienced in veggie menus, the meal is often nutritionally imbalanced, often low in protein or fat, particularly. It's a way for the restaurant to maximise profit, rather than choosing the best possible food in terms of flavour, texture, variety etc.
b) it's a lazy restaurants approach to try and ensure they only have one option to cook, & I hate this. It's placing the preferences of those who choose a vegetarian diet over the preferences of most people eating the diet humans have evolved to thrive on, omnivorous diet.
c) while technically omnivores can eat veggie or vegan food, I struggle with this my work canteen has switched to all vegan desserts. To make cakes etc inexpensively and palatably with no dairy & egg, the options often have non-natural ingredients/additives I would not normally include in my diet. Or they are terrifically over sweetened to compensate for the challenges of baking on restricted ingredients.

Yanbu.
I'm not a fan of cheese at all.
A vegetarian menu wouldn't phase me, but a cheese one would.
If I'm having vegetarian food I want colour, flavours, spices, textures and freshness.
Since being in India I only eat vegetable curries. They really are the best.

Could you put a packet of ham in your handbag?

I’d be feeling rather underwhelmed about that menu.

I’m happy to choose vegetarian options from a menu, but given that most people in the UK eat meat, I’d have assumed that one or both of the starter and main would contain meat, unless I was told otherwise.

And if someone said vegetarian Mediterranean themed menu to me, then I’d be expecting a menu that was centred around actual vegetables, rather than one centred around cheese.

But I guess this is the risk you take when you sign up for an event with a set menu before the menu is announced.
People have such varied preferences that whatever they’d pick there’s no way they’re going to please everyone with their set menu that’s announced at the last minute.

Spare a thought for those who have to endure without any food.

So nobody on MN can ever raise a topic about food because it's not fair on people who don't have food?

I’m another who thinks it isn’t an especially well balanced menu, with the cheesecake and semi-freddo being too similiar in ingredients, texture and probably colour.

But very interested to hear the report back!

Feta cheesecake sounds absolutely vile!

I don't even eat meat but think that menu sounds really shit! Especially for that price!

Isn’t a feta cheesecake just a sort of quiche? I’m imagining it with salad and roasted vegetables........
More lunch than dinner, though.

Delia has a savoury feta cheesecake.
It’s feta cheese, fromage frais, looks like cheesecake with some herbs in it, made with feta instead of cream cheese. It isn’t a baked cheesecake.

(And it sounds horrible)

OP you do realise you're going to have to post an extremely comprehensive review of this now? Many of us have become very invested in the feta cheesecake!

I need a full review of the cheesecake. In fact the other bits sound ok but that? Not sure

I'm baffled by those who think that a feta cheesecake (savoury, presumably served with veg and salad) and a semifreddo (basically icecream) will be made with similar ingredients and look similar. I would expect them to look and taste completely different. I guess they both have dairy in them. That's about it.

Also, arancini might be cheesy, but not necessarily. I love mushroom arancini, and I've had yummy ones with sausagemeat in them.

Arancini can have practically anything in them. I would probably use a spicy vegetable filling and a mushroom one for starters. Sometimes I put some mozarella in the risotto rice to help it hold together, but no other cheese.

Those things sound nice I must admit!

However as veggie food is so much cheaper i think it's wrong of them not to mention this at the time when you pay.

bridgetreilly
I see the cheesecake and the semi-freddo as both bring big wodges of creamy dairy stuff, cream / fresh cheese / egg, creamy white in colour, creamy in texture.

Hopefully they will taste different. And semifreddo is very cold, the Delia feta cheesecake is served cold.

Verdict: very pleasant but not good value for money. Won’t be going to another supper club, will stick to the tastings.

It was only £40, not £45 so that was some improvement/ lowering of expectations!

For those interested in the detailed food and drink

• started with a martini rosso - with ice, no mixer. (Quite fashionable I believe).
• some home made bread - delicious but crying out for oil and vinegar, a dip or butter
• arancini were stuffed with mozzarella and served with a puttanesca sauce (without anchovy for this veggie theme . Two big ones. Very nice, good sauce. Paired with a Sicilian white, grizzo I think?
• feta cheesecake was served with a giant butter beans salad, mixed toms and pepper plus some leaves with a lovely fig dressing. DH thought the cheesecake tasted like Boursin on biscuit. Nice enough, wouldn’t rave about it. Paired with an interesting really light Argentinian red wine, forgotten the name already.
• semi freddo was raspberry with a gorgeous raspberry sauce and an almond tuille. Was lovely and inspired me to make a semi freddo now (probably the recommend Nigella honey one). Paired with a delicious French muscat which I would definitely drink again.

The wine quantities were small, probably 100ml for the red and white and 50 for the muscat.

Did they actually say it was vegetarian, or was that just your assumption based on the lack of meat?

Unless they were advertising it as vegetarian, there's no issue with the anchovy sauce and they could have just left this off or substituted it for actual vegetarians.

But £40 for a decent 3 course meal including drinks is usually what it costs anyway, so I don't see the need to feel short changed. I would have been full after the bread and arancini anyway.

They described it as vegetarian on the night and when providing the menu yes. Only this week though not at the time of advertising or booking (a couple of months ago), then it was just ‘summer supper club’.