That restaurants should know parmesan isn't vegetarian?

[SpikyCoconut]

My Mum has booked this restaurant and asked if I want to come along.

Surely the chef should know this?

https://www.315barandrestaurant.co.uk/

Wibu to get in touch with them and ask if it is actually a parmesan substitute (in which case it should be labelled correctly!) Or if they can develop a different dish that actually IS vegetarian? There are two dishes with parmesan on the vegetarian menu.

@SpikyCoconut , I said about the options for vegetarians, they don't look great! I've never heard of a 'sweet potato burger' before actually! But it sounds like an awful texture. Like offering someone a mashed potato sandwich!

I don't think the menu options look bad, but they are pretty much the standard veggie options on most menus and seem uninspired. There's nothing that makes me think, 'That sounds intriguing', more 'Here we go again - goats cheese, beetroot, veg filled pastry, risotto' but bonus points for no mushrooms or butternut squash risotto.

The sweet potato burger and potato chips meal shows lack of understanding of what makes a balanced meal. A chip butty would probably be an improvement.

The food might be delicious but it looks like another menu created by an omnivore who thinks this is what vegetarians like.

Thing is I don't really judge in general, because there are many beliefs and practices in life I don't believe in but others do. All my opinions here are what I believe but I don't ram them down peoples throats as some vegans/veggies do, or act morally outraged all the time, because as @Lovepeaceunderstanding says, non of us are 100% guilt free.If someone asks me however, I'll tell them.
I saw vegans pushing vaccines during covid that were being tested on a multitude of different species, most irrelevant to the human immune response, to the extreme because of the speed they wanted them out and ripped me to shreds for pointing it out.
It's just hypocrisy I don't like and the attempt at shaming others, when they themselves could be shamed for the very point they're making.

I follow a dairy farmer on instagram.

apparently cows are shit mothers and often calves need to be removed anyway as the dopey idiots will lie on them, or kick them, or just not bother.

they’ve posted some interesting details re all the emotional language around “babies” being “ripped” from mothers, when I’m reality the cows don’t give a fuck.

we do often anthropomorphise animals. As long as they live comfortable pain free lives I don’t think many of them worry about the injustice of “cages” etc.

personally I applaud anyone who puts in any effort thinking about animals and the environment. Even if someone has one meat free day a week, if 200 people did that it’d probably have the same effect as one vegetarian. I don’t get the vitriol and judgement against people who aren’t “proper” vegetarians because they had a bacon sandwich once. Better one bacon sandwich a year than think fuck it, I can’t do this vegetarian thing, I’ll just go back to eating meat daily.

small steps by everyone will have a bigger impact than the one vegan who thinks anyone not completely vegan might as well not bother.

My family were dairy farmers and he’s talking bollocks. I’m not going to get into the morality of what people eat, but of course dairy farmers will try put that narrative out there. The very basics of looking at your sources.

I’m vegan because of what I saw growing up. I don’t judge others because it’s still very much the norm to eat meat and the propaganda/misinformation on both ‘sides’ is unhelpful and confusing to people. I also don’t think judging is productive in discussion about it as people tend to just dig their heels in rather than listen to each other.

I personally think the idea of anthropomorphism is nonsense. Humans aren't the only animals who've evolved emotions and connections to the offspring. Look at primates, look at dogs.

As much as I'd like to believe it's true, I'm sceptical of farmers claiming it's common for cows to be crap parents, that goes against evolution for that to be the norm, especially for mammals where the infant is vulnerable - but would of course support his profession.

Vegetarian is quite a loose terms. Lots of people consider themselves vegetarian but eat eggs and dairy products. Someone who doesn't eat any animal products is vegan in my book.

You were only partly wrong. Parmesan is a protected term - but only within the EU. So it was protected in the UK until relatively recently.

I've heard that some breeds are more maternal than others, particularly that Highland cows are very attentive mothers. I guess because of where they have been raised, it's a more essential trait?

I think that you, the customer, chooses where to eat - or not. If it says parmiggiano in a good restaurant it probably is the real stuff and you can choose whether to eat it or stay away from it. The chef can do whatever he/she wants to do, It's not up to the customer to decide what goes in the dishes - and I know from experience that a lot of cooks truly believe cheese is vegetarian.

@Elphame

Never trust soup in a restaurant if you're vegetarian!

I live near two dairy farms. The cries from the cows when their calf is taken away are heart rendering, and can go on for days. And yes, some breeds more than others. Friesians seem to be less 'maternal'

Well I never, turns out I've been feeding my vegetarian niece Parmesan forever. Oops 😬

As much as I'd like to believe it's true, I'm sceptical of farmers claiming it's common for cows to be crap parents, that goes against evolution for that to be the norm, especially for mammals where the infant is vulnerable - but would of course support his profession.

I live near some fields of beef cows, and there is certainly a lot of mooing and distress on both sides when the calves are separated from their mothers.

I read an interesting book recently about sheep farming, written by an experienced sheep farmer (this one if you're interested). He claimed that the wilder breeds that he had owned were much better mothers, and the more highly-domesticated breeds were worse mothers, and more likely to abandon their lambs, or trample them, or be generally inept.

Maybe cows are only shit mothers because they weren't raised by their mothers. The bovine equivalent of attachment disorders.

@mathanxiety I said this too - Parmigiano Reggiano is a specific recipe and uses animal rennet (has to in order to be called by that name). If it isn’t called exactly that it can use non-animal rennet and be vegetarian. Years ago most cheese used animal rennet and it was hard to even find veggie cheese. I posted a link to a non-animal, veggie Parmesan - quite a lot available now, most Italian hard cheese in recent years has become available in veggie form 😀

Maybe because the babies of neglectful mothers mostly survive to pass on their genes, like in domesticated humans, these traits are not selected against like in the wild.

I know several vegetarians who eat cheese made with rennet, and Haribo. I guess they are left of flexitarian and not quite full vegetarian really. I also know a pescatarian who says he’s vegetarian because explaining pescatarian is trickier.

Exactly. That’s why I became a vegan.

Years ago virtually all British cheese was made using rennet. Our local supermarket helpfully had a file showing the ingredients of every food on the deli counter so we could pick cheeses to suit our newly vege 8 year old daughter, now over 40 and vegan. Apparently now almost all British cheeses are made using microbes instead of rennet, it's supposedly cheaper. Some old recipes, especially in Europe, have to use rennet from calves to remain authentic, such as Parmigiano-Reggiano, but there are varieties of Parmesan which are vegetarian. You have to ask, you can never assume the chef knows everything, but he might be on the ball with a vege option.

My db worked in a very popular, award winning Indian restaurant. He said the dishes labelled as vegan all had milk in them, because all the curries used the same base curry, which had milk in it. When he queried this with the manager, he said it was ok, as it just had a small amount

That's awful, @poshsnobtwit . Those vegans who are taking a moral stance do have to decide whether to trust restaurant labels, but what about people with allergies?
It's not as if it's hard to make vegan curries.

I also know a pescatarian who says he’s vegetarian because explaining pescatarian is trickier.

Well, he can't be trying very hard, then. "I don't eat any meat apart from fish." How difficult is that?

I obviously don't know him personally, but I wonder if it's explaining WHY he's pescatarian that's trickier - especially if he happens to be one of these preachy people who will make a big show about 'not eating meat' and asking how other people could possibly do such a thing; but then having to tell them that he too does actually eat meat - just not all kinds of meat?

On the other hand, if he does quietly get on with his own dietary choices and respects those of other people, the simple 8-word explanation that I suggested above will suit him perfectly. If he encounters any boorish sorts, he can just rinse and repeat and tell them that is his personal dietary choice and that is that.

That is shocking. I wonder if he'd be happy accepting attempted payment with a card that 'only expired four days ago'?

You'll all survive if you've been feeding her cheaper parmesan and not Parmigiano Reggiano.

You learn something new every day