To expect pubs to serve a decent vegetarian meal?

[Allshallbewell2021]

Three pub meals over the past three months have been dire or inedible. One risotto (rice not cooked) one bean/taco meal (clearly from a tin really grim), one Xmas dinner butternut squash thing (clearly from the freezer, slimy and disgusting).
And not cheap either.
Tonight I had chips, peas and battered halloumi (too much straight cheese for anyone) but quite nice.

Is a good vegetarian pub option not economically viable?

Absolutely bang on. When I was an "ethical vegetarian" who thought veganism looked too hard, if the only option(s) on a menu had been vegan I would have been delighted that I could easily eat some even lower cruelty items. It baffles me as to why any "ethical vegetarian" would object to cutting out even more animal products, if they are serious as to the reasons for their vegetarianism and it is made easy.

I don't want much vegan cheese either nor am I keen on jackfruit or most fake meats, but the issue here is the rise of these junk foods (after all, vegetarians have been eating fake meat lasagnes since forever) and not veganism. I don't understand why some here think that vegans don't in fact eat vegetables, nuts or beans.

I mean, I’d love it if places only sold vegan food, because I don’t like animal cruelty! Anyway, as I said before, there are usually multiple vegetarian options available at any given restaurant.

I agree and often the options are really limited - many a time I’ve been to a pub with only one veggie option on a menu of 20+ items.

and nearly always a mushroom dish which is great until you are a veggie allergic to mushrooms like me 😭😭😭😭

Soup and chips is normally what I end up with (although pretty good a lot of the time)

When I visit my mum we usually go to a local pub for dinner one night and they have a reasonable range of vegan and vegetarian food. Not fantastic, it probably is just heated up, but it tastes ok for pub grub and is nicely presented. I usually have a veggie lasagne, a veggie chilli or a veggie curry (which I think may be vegan) and there are a couple of other vegetarian/vegan options as well.

I don't eat red meat but am otherwise not vegetarian so there are other things I can eat but this place serves vegetarians well, so it can be done, and they are always packed, so clearly make a decent amount of money too.

Oh AND they have a dog-friendly section and a dog-free section ;)

The only amazing vegan meal I had was in a vegan restaurant - it was proper, imaginative food which was naturally vegan (so not pretend meat or weird and wonderful ingredients with the taste and texture of tree bark).

Sadly it closed down soon after!

I went to a restaurant last year that has recently been awarded a Michelin star. It was a 7 course tasting menu for £70. The veggie option didn't have a single piece of protein in any of the courses and the portions were tiny. Think a matchbox sized square of rice with a sliver of carrot on top for one course. I came home and had a piece of toast as I was still hungry. All the meat eaters had fantastic food. So. Bloody. Depressing.

Sadly most veggie stuff is bloody vegan now. They think because we 'can' eat vegan food, that we want to!

That used to be my complaint - I’d be eating pasta with tomato sauce, and the meat eaters would be having steak! Splitting the bill was always a little 🧐

I ate out in a pub the other day, and the food was excellent, but if you were a veggie (I'm not) the choice was limited, and if you were vegan there was bugger all. It's similar at other pubs in the area (rural East Anglia) I've eaten at in the past year, though one has largely switched out what used to be the single veggie option for something vegan.

I think the demand for vegan food in this part of the world is low compared to the demand even for veggie food, which is not all that high. There used to be one veggie eatery in about an 8 mile radius, and even that has changed hands and now includes some meat on the menu.

You need a critical mass of veggies or vegans to provide enough demand.

Don’t know where you are eating that doesn’t have vegan AND vegetarian options. I’ve had lovely vegetarian and vegan food in pubs.

“nor do we want stuff that is shaped like a bit of meat or fish” I hate it when people say things like this, if you love meat/salami why do slice it up to resemble cucumber for example. Shape it into the dead creature it is…
Plus some vegans do like it to resemble meat /fish. Let people eat what they want- there’s plenty to go around- for now.

I got ok food in Norfolk on my holidays...but more Indian and Italian than local specials.
Places where you're offered penne pasta in chefs special tomato sauce which he gets from the cash and carry are a pain. I have been to our local cash and carry and admired the massive jars it comes in.

Thai/Chinese/Japanese restaurants are so much better at vegetarian than pubs.

If it isn’t a vegan fake meat burger with awful fake cheese then it is pie with so much pastry and no filling it feels like you are eating for days!

It really isn’t difficult to have a proper veggie burger that has some flavour!

The point the OP is making is about quality and value as much as choice. I'm sick of the one or two vegetarian options being replaced by the multipurpose nut-dairy-soy-gluten free vegan option, usually some form of fake meat or fake cheese on it.

I'm a life long vegetarian who just happens to eat mostly vegan at home and find faux meat unpleasant to eat. Fake meat burgers, fake cheese and vegan food devoid of protein is not a vegan meal I would ever make or serve at home. If the vegan options were decent quality dishes I'd wouldn't even notice they were vegan rather than vegetarian.

Nor is it about healthy options - I'm not fussed about that for the odd meal out but dishes devoid of protein mean I'm still hungry an hour later despite paying as much for a few vegetables and processed garbage as the steak and salmon eaters pay for a substantial main course.

My friend did this as there was no vegetarian option onl vegan.
I was embarrassed but luckily there was an excellent Indian quite close by.

I think it's harder for restaurants to accommodate not only food preferences but allergies as well. We do a lovely vegan Thai curry and a vegetarian mushroom tagliatelle. But our chips are done in the same fryer as chicken goujons so aren't vegan or gluten free. (You'll be shocked at how many restaurants claim they are vegan when they are not.) We can only fit in and afford to run two fryers and one is for fish. We now have to have a completely different area for gluten free. The chiefs has to change before going there. We can no longer guarantee anything is nut free due to buying in ingredients which say 'may contain traces of nuts' and the risk of contamination. It's pretty hard for small restaurants and bars to cope will all the demands and allergies. They weren't this common 10/15 plus years ago when these kitchens were getting built. I've definitely noticed an increase in gluten free/vegan demands over the last 10 years I've been working as a waitress. We did have a few more vegetarian options but had to get ride of them to fit in the increase demand for vegan/gluten free things.

I don’t like meat replacements either but, again, I find complaining that you might have to eat a meal without added animal cruelty to be just… odd.

They aren't vegetarian either if they're fried in the same fryer as chicken...

If you like Michelin starred food, Sat Bains in nottingham has an incredible vegetarian tasting menu. I was absolutely stuffed at the end of it. I think it was £195pp though, so definitely not a regular occurrence!

Sorry I dont agree with you. An ethical vegetarian is likely to have a different perspective to a vegan. I have been vegetarian for over 40 years - came to it through things like campaigning for free-range eggs. Not available in many parts of the world. Or wanting animals to be transported more humanely. (Still for slaughter - I dont choose to eat meat, but I eat happily products from animals who have been well-treated).

I don't know whether it's just round here, but out of 5 country pubs' menus I looked at recently, 4 marked fish and chips as vegetarian or vegan! Actual fish, not pretend fish. One also has salmon down as vegetarian. With menus like that, I'm not sure I trust most pubs to manage to provide a half edible vegetarian or vegan meal.

The 5th one was amazing we went there.

Nearly a quarter into the 21st century so surely it's not unreasonable or entitled to expect to get at least a couple of choices for vegetarians and at least one vegan one. Even a burger can be made into an interesting option with a bit of thought. It's not difficult, and if chefs don't want to be bothered catering for non meat eaters, maybe they need to get a different job.

100% this

When i stopped eating meat 38years ago, eating out meant ordering a salad or asking if they would make me an omelette. Gradually the offering got much better and many places had maybe a handful of options however since the vegan thing began a few years ago it’s all gone backwards. Is vegetarians fought for 30+ years to get a decent selection and veganism has just destroyed that in 5years.
As for all of those complaining of entitlement of op, if I go to a nice restaurant for a Christmas lunch as an example and others have options of salmon, steak, turkey etc, why would I be happy with paying the same amount of money for mushroom risotto? Its pure laziness by the restaurant and the chef, and also a massive financial con.

The most fabulous veggie tasting menu I have ever had (and not had many) was at Le Manoir. I met my ex-DH in the mid-1990's and we didnt have DC for ages, so used to like fancy hotels and holidays. The tasting menu - 7 courses was beyond lovely - he had the normal one and mine was veggie. It was special but I was stuffed. So I think you were robbed! Did you contact them afterwards with feedback? Yes I sound like a broken record but I am so tired of organisations stating "they didnt know" "nobody contacted them" etc. Make it clear what the problem is. PS I've just googled the Le Manoir tasting menu - veggie and vegan nearly identical with a lot of repetition, and no protein. So I've emailed my thoughts. I'll post the reply.

Please stop blaming veganism for the crappy food that's available in pubs these days.
Many vegans also hanker for the days when the veggie/ vegan option included things like nut loaf, chickpeas, lentils, pulses etc and was proper home-cooked food, not ultra processed fake 'meat'!

I went to a pizza chain the other day (our works xmas event) where they boast that you can pick any toppings and style your own pizza. I duly chose one with tomato sauce and about six different vegetables, no cheese or meat.

However when it turned up at the table I discovered that they'd left off some of the veg, and sprinkled some kind of vegan 'cheese' all over it (presumably because one of my colleagues told them that I was vegan. I hadn't ordered this, and definitely didn't want it. I sent it back.

The only way to change this is for people who care about what they eat to tell pubs/ other places that they don't want UPF, they want proper food made of recognisable ingredients.

How do you get that from:

"I'm a life long vegetarian who just happens to eat mostly vegan at home"

and

"If the vegan options were decent quality dishes I'd wouldn't even notice they were vegan rather than vegetarian"

My point is the same as the OP's - its about the quality and value of the vegan options as much as the presence or absence of dairy. Why are they such poor value for money and so unimaginative compared to the meat based options on the same menu? Its not difficult to produce decent and imaginative vegan and veggie food if chefs/restaurants actually want to do it.

If you are veggie/vegan for ethical reasons then its worth looking at the supply chain and processes in some of the fake meats and dairy - they are not drowning in ethics. Not surprising as mostly they are intensively produced by multinationals.