Meal for 6 vegan restaurant

[Upcyled]

Going out for an evening meal 6 people a week on Friday.
1 person is vegan so has suggested we go to a vegan restaurant.
I'm not against veganism and have family that are vegetarian and vegan which is great their choice.
I am struggling with a vegan restaurant as a choice to be honest. If it were vegetarian I'd be fine with it but vegan seems too much to expect. Obviously the drinks will also be vegan.
I've eaten at great vegan places for lunch not an issue just a whole 3 course meal has annoyed me a bit. Vegan butter, vegan cheese etc (they're not butter or cheese)
So I guess AIBU to suggest a vegetarian restaurant as a compromise?
I guess I don't want to come across as 'the awkward one'

I find that vegan restaurants can be very hit and Miss regardless of how expensive they are.

I ended up having a bit of a row with a chef at a moderately fancy place who refused to tell me what was in one of the dishes. It was unique to him apparently and he wasn't giving away his secrets. I told him I wasn't eating anything that I didn't recognise and where I couldn't know what was in it.... he ended up hissing the main ingredients at me and stalking off. I darent order desert after that!

They have said they don't like the trend for fake meat vegan food - many vegetarians and vegans don't like fake meat but just want normal veggie and vegan food.

I'm asking the OP what she doesn't like about this previously great restaurant which suddenly has nothing edible on the menu.

The best veggie restaurants always had vegan options on the menu and tend still to be good as vegan restaurants unless they go for a "fake cheese in everythign" approach.

IME the fake meat vegan meals are commonest in regular restaurants who now delight in two "options" - the fake meat option and the meat/dairy/gluten/nut/soy free multibuy which tastes of sod all and is therefor suitable for all those annoying people who don't eat meat.

Yes its certainly the case that the vegan restaurant business has its share of arseholes just like any other category!

Similarly good "mixed" restaurants which cook their own food can often cater for variations on the existing menu or do a "special" with some advanced warning.

I think this is a mindset issue. Have you checked the menu? I am a massive fan of meat, eat it every day, sometimes in more than one meal but I have friends who are vegan. I've been to a vegan restaurant with them a few times and had lovely meals. Yes, if there was meat on the menu I'd have probably chosen that but I tried new things and it was tasty. I assume you aren't on the carnivore diet so much of what is on the menu would be stuff you'd eat?

Do any decent vegetarian restaurants still exist?

I was very disappointed when my favourite (ok only local one) went vegan.

After an expensive and frankly disappointing meal we ceased to be regular customers and have never been back.

It seems everyone has agreed to do this, and now looking at the menu you're not keen- post the menu in the group chat, and confirm everyone is happy to eat there.

I am veggie and would not fancy a vegan restaurant

No, a lot of vegan dishes are not hyper processed.
Only if they serve fake meat and fake cheese, but no decent vegan chef would serve this kind of food.

Instead they get creative with plant foods.

I’m not vegan. I’m not even vegetarian. But I’d happily eat a meal in a vegan restaurant, and have done so more than once out of choice.

Most vegan restaurants don’t serve ‘fake meat’ in any form, unless they’re deliberately trying to cater for people who want a vegan version of greasy fast food, and if that’s case the ‘fake meat’ is no more processed than the equivalent non-vegan items.

Would be absolutely fine by me. 1 person is vegan but everyone can eat vegan food. If you were vegan and your friend wanted to go to a steak house I'd understand if you didn't want to go. This sounds like a good opportunity to try new plant based foods. Give it a chance!

Vegan restaurants serving fresh food don't serve processed pre prepared food! They serve proper vegan dishes created from vegetables/ lentils/ beans/ rice etc
The reason that there are fake meats on the market is that manufacturers have seen a marketing gap with which to make money. So there's more of that stuff in the shelves. But don't forget that most of the uk bought meat products are also highly processed eg burgers sausages ham pies sliced meat etc etc.
so stop having a go at vegans based on what the manufacture have decided to market. Most vegans eat vegetables beans and lentils etc and cook.

I wouldn’t be going.

I need animal protein in every meal so I eat a lot of meat. The high carb vegan fillers like chickpeas, lentils etc are really bad for me.

Eating meat is also a choice or don't you see that?

Meat eater goes to vegan restaurant they can eat anything on the menu... so can the vegan. Maybe the vegan wants more than one or two choices for once?

For me it would depend on the menu. I ate in a local vegan cafe and I really struggled as there was a lot of vegan "cheese" and fake meats.

I would have been happy with an interesting salad but the choices were pretty bad. They did have an interesting sounding burger but it was on a brioche bun which I have an unreasonable hatred for so I was a bit stuck.

Oh and a coffee with oat milk if you're not used to it is very disappointing.

I think a vegetarian restaurant with vegan options might be better.

All those commenting on vegan restaurants serving UPF - vegan restaurants generally provide wonderful plant based dishes with the plants as the main feature of the dish. All cooked from scratch in the restaurant and great flavour combinations.

Regular restaurants where meat is the main item in the menu have now removed all vegetarian items and replaced them with two token ultra processed vegan options that are pre-prepared, sometimes heated up alongside meat and completely inflexible - eg the vegan cheese cannot be swapped for regular cheese.

Dining out as a veggie or vegan has become so much harder and unhealthier. We tend to go for cuisines that lend themselves better to veggie food such as Indian

As has been mentioned on this thread... many vegan restaurants = no.

Somewhere like Gauthier in Soho... sign me up. But with that one, I know the chef is both excellent in general and really accommodating when it comes to food allergies, so I would have no concerns over eating there.

You made a frankly ignorant assumption.

I have an autoimmune disorder that means I flare badly with the exact type of foods that I mentioned. Meat is the only thing that I can eat freely without concern.

I wouldn’t go because I couldn’t eat anything or else spend a couple of weeks dealing with a painful flare up.

Luckily my best friend who is vegan understands this and we pick restaurants where we can both get something that suits us.

If there were items on the menu I'd be happy to eat, no problem atall.

I'm a meat eater, but so do sometimes choose the vegetarian option, prefer vegetables on pizza, so I'm not overly fussed about meat having to be a part of a meal.

What I can't stand is fake cheese, fake meat, tofu...

So if I could eat something that was entirely potatoes, veg, salad, I'd be fine with that. But I can't stomach the fake stuff.

Whenever my group of friends go out we share ideas for restaurants and always ask our vegan friend to look at the options and check she is ok with them. If they are shit, or just a token offering that she doesn't like, we don't go. We always manage to find somewhere that suits us all, or revisit somewhere that's been good in the past.

Being vegan is very restrictive and I wouldn't expect a whole group to pay for a meal they're not happy with for one persons choices. In the same way I wouldn't expect someone to go for an Indian, Chinese, Italian, if they didn't like that cuisine.

Are you a cat?

I sometimes eat food that happens to be vegan, but the difficulty with "Vegan Food" is that it often contains my IBS triggers including soya. Vegan Food is often far more keen to claim what it isn't rather than what it actually is which makes assessing the laxiitive effect tricky.

Vegan "Cheese" and other substitutes are usually rank. DS had CMPA so we did plenty of experimenting with Vegan subsititutes which firmly put me off veganism.

I'd happily eat at a vegetarian resturant, but would not want to risk eating at a vegan resturant and paying ££ to end up sitting in the toilets for half the night.