Being told what to order from takeaway..

[Beanz2022]

friend invited me round for drinks and food, she said we could get indian takeaway..(context, her and her husband are veggies) she text me one hour before and said would it be OK if you didn't order a meat dish as we don't allow meat in the house.. so I ended up having a vegetable curry which, I really hated.. she had whatever she wanted and thoroughly enjoyed it.. why invite me round if you know I eat meat and won't allow me to order what I want.

You didn’t have to order a vegetable curry - you could have asked for paneer or egg.

Why is it wrong to eat shark meat ?

Oh dear, I don't think either of you are actually being unreasonable. It's just an unfortunate clash of preferences.

Your friend was hosting. If she'd cooked, there is a risk you wouldn't have liked the food. Probably quite a high chance as you couldn't find anything veggie you fancied on an Indian menu... usually they have many options: paneer, chana, baingan etc... so (and no criticism here) it sounds like you're quite discerning about what you eat.

The annoying thing is that you probably really fancied your fave curry so it was disappointing that you couldn't have it. You probably would have been less disappointed about a home cooked meal as you wouldn't have been expecting great things.

I do think paying makes a difference here as is someone is catering (whether cooking or paying) you usually just accept what you're given.

On the other hand: your pal is completely entitled to keep a meat-free home. As PP have said, you wouldn't take pork into a kosher kitchen.

So I think you're not unreasonable to feel a bit fed up about it, but it would be unreasonable to be angry with your friend or expect her to have meat in her house.

For next time (if there is one), if curry is suggested, maybe say you'd rather get something else like takeaway pizzas or Turkish or whatever

Depends how highly you value being a good, hospitable host, I guess. And whether you value your views on the morals of eating meat more - and whether you see it as your role to enforce that view on others if they are eating ‘under your roof’, while in the knowledge they eat meat everywhere else.

It’s your prerogative to insist on things being done your way when people are in your house, but you should accept that not everyone will agree with you, and some will feel you are being controlling and ill-mannered. We all have a different take on things, but if you want to restrict others you can expect some people to be less than happy about it. It’s up to you which way you go with it, but you can’t expect to control the eating of others and simultaneously control their opinion of your actions in restricting them.

Just let it go amd enjoy the veggie curry and catch up with your friend...then go home and have a bacon sandwich if you want. Everyone is happy.

🙄 I’ll bet they walk around in leather shoes happily enough. Do they allow shoes in their house?

Interesting. Would you accuse a kosher or halal household of being controlling or ill mannered or just veggies?

And yes, obviously most vegetarian and vegans are going to stay true to their morals, just as you wouldn't abandon yours just to be a good host, it's just that your morals and boundaries are not routinely encroached upon and dismissed.
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't let people you are hosting have a orgy, skin up or do misogynistic religious chants so you can afford other people the same freedom of choice in their own homes.

The world is literally set up for meat eaters so you are not sacrificing anything at all.

I think she was a bit cheeky to ask you this . Be prepared next time .

For the same reason that saying “please don’t have sex in my living room” is not the same thing as telling a guest to suck it up and have sex even if they don’t want to. Asking someone to refrain from something is not the equivalent of insisting that they do something they have an ethical opposition to.

Considering that we've already clearly stated that we are talking about what people are allowed to do - not forced to do - and that nobody has remotely suggested that anybody be made to go against their own ethical stance and preferences, I don't get your point.

I have always said that the host has every right to not allow others to eat meat in HER home, but that she should have set this out plenty in advance, when the plans were being discussed. That way, OP could have had meat, as she wanted - if they had eaten at the Indian restaurant or made other mutually agreeable plans - and the friend's home could stay firmly meat-free, with everybody knowing exactly what the situation was.

Whatever your ethical position, it doesn't give anybody a licence to be a rude host or to dismiss the feelings and wishes of others.

@Beanz2022
i honestly cannot believe the responses on your thread. Your friend was being a massive dick and if you are invited for a meal you should be able to eat your preference. Can you imagine inviting her to yours and refusing to allow her to eat vegetarian. It’s exactly the same. Everyone else saying but you could eat something non meaty or you eat vegetables with your meal anyway. It’s not the same. YANBU. Your friend is.

Well this has divided opinions a lot !

I think it depends to some extent if @Beanz2022 already knew that the friend was a veggie, my DB is and there is no way I would consider eating meat in his home , I don't eat it when we go out either ( this is my choice he has never asked me not to eat meat when we are out)

But if I didn't know I would be miffed if it was sprung on me with such short notice, especially as I tend to look at menu's well in advance so I have time to think about what I want.
If I'd been looking forward to a beef curry for a while I would not enjoy a veg curry , even if it was a nice one.

I'm saying that everybody should bear in mind that eating meat, vegetarianism and veganism are all common dietary choices, so unless they are eating with people they regularly eat with, this should be the first thing that pops into their minds when planning a meal with others. Also things like allergies: this is just natural when you're catering/planning meals including people who do/may have specific requirements, so you DO need to consider that.

If you choose to ignore it, you are a bad host and friend - it makes as much 'sense' as an all-male group of architects omitting any provision for ladies' toilets and claiming 'it just didn't occur to them that women might also need to go, and couldn't use urinals'.

I've already 'engaged with the premise' and answered your hypothetical question about dog meat. You don't actually know me or my morals; but as I said before, if I happily eat (non-human!) meat, I wouldn't have a moral objection to somebody else eating a different kind of meat. It's not the 'gotcha' that you seem to think it is.

Nobody - certainly not I - has suggested asking vegans to cook meat. I'm presuming that, if the chefs at the Indian takeaway objected to cooking meat, they wouldn't offer it or get a job there.

Yet again, I have never suggested that a vegan/vegetarian should have to cook, touch or allow meat into their home, if they have a moral objection to it. The question arose from this OP because the friend chose not to mention a very important factor when agreeing what and where she and OP would meet and eat.

It's kind of the equivalent of a MN thread titled 'My husband beats me every single night - should I leave him' and then coming back four hours later to hundreds of posters' sound advice and adding "oh, by the way, I meant at Boggle". Whether online or irl, drip-feeding is selfish, deliberately misleading and wholly unnecessary.

I was responding directly to your question about why it’s ok to ask omnivores to not eat meat in a vegetarian’s house but it’s not ok to tell vegetarians to suck it up and eat meat even if they find it unethical. So I don’t know who the “we” you’re speaking of is, but apparently some people here are indeed confused about the difference between compelling people to do something they find unethical and asking them to refrain from doing something in a specific place or time.

If argument is that the friend’s behavior wasn’t ok only because she gave an hour of notice and not a day, that’s utterly different than the comment I was addressing. How much notice is enough is going to be purely subjective IMO.

It's not unusual for veggies/vegans to not want meat in their home.

Not all by any means but many.

I can't work out if this is a new friend or an old friend who has recently gone veggie because surely it would have come up before.

Eitherway it's not unreasonable for your friend to not want meat in her home but it's poor show to call you up an hour before(assuming you weren't already there) to tell you there were restrictions.

Not everyone can be upfront with others when faced with something they didn't expect. It's easy to say 'just say no' but many people get flustered and just agree to keep the peace.

Not everyone likes vegetarian alternatives. Maybe if OP had been given more notice or told when she agreed to come she could have spent more time looking at the other options but if she doesn't like them, she doesn't like them. End of.

I personally would have struggled because of my own dietary restrictions and would have declined to continue with the engagement.

If you reason it out a prawn curry is no more inhumane than the eggs and milk in vegetarian options. You can't tell it's meat etc in a curry. So I think that it's a shabby way to host a friend. Vegetarian is the personal choice not to eat meat, but you are still part of the environmental issues and animal cruelty that the farming industry causes. Kosher and Halal would mean the option to choose something you'd enjoy to eat. It wouldn't be an issue for me, but the OP should have been given warning seeing as she was paying.

..."said would it be OK if you didn't order a meat dish"

You are a grown up so the choices are
A) Say it's not an issue then seethe and post on the internet about it
B) say it's not an issue and eat something that isn't your favourite for one night
C) say 'actually I was really looking forward to chicken tikka, shall I eat before I come over and we can have drinks a bit later?'
D) say 'I don't really like veggie curries, how about we order veg pizza etc. instead'

You were asked and could have responded in any of the above ways, and several more. So yes, YABU to complain when you could have easily mitigated the situation when originally asked not to bring meat.

@Beanz2022 "I can't stand just vegetables in my curry. Not weird, normal preference tbh"

That is a bit weird, to be honest. There are lots of vegetarian options. Did you read the menu properly?

You should be able to order what you like regardless. Their decision to not eat meat and I only eat chicken now and again and even when I was veggie only I would never tell someone else what to eat. I would have said I will eat later as sounds so controlling.

I'd be disappointed too. The vegetables in a curry are an accompaniment, not the main event. Yes the taste of the base is the same, but I enjoy the taste of the meat part too and would be feeling a tad meh about it too. Equally, they are a meat free house, so I juts wouldn't go there for takeaway again- especially one you pay for

You have learnt something for next time.
It is reasonable if your friend paid for take away at her house or if she cooked at her house.

If you are paying you should not pay for any meal for yourself that you don't enjoy. In future say honestly that you will not pay for vegetarian but you will eat before arriving at her place.

Lifelong veggie here and no meat at home. I don't think it's helpful for some posters to say they were veggie for five minutes and of course a vegetarian should let you eat meat at their house. I feel very strongly about keeping my home meat and fish free even though i don't talk about it much and would never pester others to become veggie. Everyone is different!

tbh if I were your friend I would have assumed you wouldn't need to be asked to avoid fish/meat for one evening only. It's the smell that lingers and rubbish more than anything else that are gross if you don't eat this stuff.

It doesn't sound like you particularly like or care about your friend. Surely seeing them is about more than food and you don't need to eat meat with every meal?

Lol sorry I'm with you on the veg one. I couldn't if I tried

I would be completely ok with this, it's their home and I'd respect their wishes wether the reasons were religious or not.

It's their home, their choice.

If they paid. I'd suck it up. But you paid! That's awful really. I'd say I hated the vegetable curry and would have to order meat next time. If she shuts you down, I wouldn't go over again.

If I get a takeaway at a vegetarian friends house we normally get pizza. I wouldn’t fancy a veggie curry either but you could have said that and suggested a different kind of takeaway.