To be annoyed that vegan options have replaced vegetarian?

[Sacredhandbag]

It's only a silly gripe in the grand scheme of things but it's bloody annoying.

I've been a vegetarian my whole life but since veganism has become more popular and more and more people are becoming part of the movement (and good on them!) it's like restaurants, cafes and hotels have skipped adding vegetarian options and thought "well vegan options covers both so we'll just add a few of those"

No! I am not vegan. I am vegetarian. I still want my eggs, my cream, my cheese, my butter. I want a stilton and broccoli bake, not a grilled bit of cauliflower!

Afternoon tea (I'm a fan and have one as often as I can) is the worst for it. There's an ordinary menu and then there's a vegan menu and that's it. You order one or the other. I don't want chicken or fish sandwiches but I sure as hell want my scones with proper clotted cream! So I have to be specific about the sandwiches and say I want some from one menu and some from the other. Bloody annoying.

Any other veggies feel the same?

As a vegan, it seems that I have the opposite of this problem. I'm going to a meal with extended family this week and struggled to find something that I could eat on the menu. There's a section of vegetarian options, including vegetable moussaka topped with cheese and portobello mushroom, of course with cheese.

For vegan options I could choose either a tomato and pasta dish or falafel with hummus and salad...

So, in this case, there are four vegetarian options, but only two vegan options.

Yep,agree…but as someone who often “hosts “ a vegan, they’re pretty crap choices anyway….always same sort of thing..mostly heavily dependent on Asian flavouring to make it vaguely interesting …but actually all reading the same recipe book wherever you go.

the whole vegan diet is a pain for those that are not and need to cater to veggies, meat eaters or pescatarians. 🤯.

personally think if someone wants to restrict their diet so acutely to vegan, they should be offered one single vegan dish on a menu (same as when I’m cooking) and take it or leave it (eg then they just have sides). And then the restaurant does need to be genuinely creative and not take easy option of artificial cheese or Asian fallouts. Veggies then get a wider choice as less restrictive and a lot of meat eaters will happily opt for veggie if it looks good …. And then at least 2 fish dishes agian for pescatarians and folks like me that’ll normally choose fish over meat anyway

im jumping through hoops currently whenever this person visits and we want to go out, being told there aren’t enough vegan options at that place etc. I even looked at the only vegan cafe for miles to eat out at lunch time instead..but by god it was a weird menu (no doubt form reviews delicious to the vegans) and decided I wasn’t going to make the 5 other people to be forced to eat weird vegan choices, so this one person had a lot of choices.

i also have a massive issue about how dependant on UPF this vegan is- read the ingredients on backs of her packets and it’s genuinely scary. Some stuff is full of shit. We now are realising how damaging UPF are, but that is a message my frequent visitor refuses to hear…wants her artificial meat and cheese replacement crap. And she’s actually a brilliant cook and could do this, she says she just misses the sausages, cheese etc 🙄🤯. Love her to bits apart form this 🤣🤣🤣

Completely agree OP. Give me my proper bloody cheese and mayo.

Totally agree and what is even worse is when in restaurants they do a catch all vegan / vegetarian/ gluten free as being gf isn’t even a choice in most cases .

I'm a meat eater, and my DD is veggie. I eat veggie with her to save money.

We rarely eat out these days anyway but I hate all the fake cheese and fake meat around. Fudge sake!! It tastes rank! At home I serve meals based on vegetables, beans, pulses, cheese and milk. Why is this so hard to replicate when going out? Has no one ever heard of a salad, or couscous, or falafel, or a mushroom wellington? If we do go out I have to plan carefully to avoid lazy vegan cooking. Eurgh.

@DrNo007 - some are listening, thank goodness. Cauldron sausages went briefly vegan and the texture was disgusting. Enough customers complained and they brought back their vegetarian sausages.

For which I am very grateful, as my weekend fry up is good again!

@LookSerious - one of the places I referred to was at least £80 a head and in the running for a Michelin star. I had previously had some of the best meals of my life there. Superb cooking. I am happy to spend £180 or more on a meal for two (on special occasions) when the cooking is great.
We went there for a celebration meal recently. No mention of it on the menu, but all the sauces had swapped from vegetarian to vegan. The coconut oil flavour ruined the (classic French) dish and it was not nice at all. So we no longer go.

It’s not all about a crap vegan pizza from a van.

I get it OP (I'm pescatarian and experience similar) - but also, if you're saying that veganism is a good thing, how else would you suggest restaurants do things?

3 different menus is quite a lot for most restaurants to offer, and obviously vegan is the most complicated so they have to think about that.

Surely it's not that difficult to just tell the restaurant you are vegetarian, that you eat butter/cheese etc, and just ask for what you want.

With your afternoon tea example I honestly don't see the issue. They will do what you want, you just have to ask. If you're saying "well why should I have to ask?" then it's a bit disingenuous to also say you support those who choose to be vegan.

It's really not that big of a deal.

The argument that “everyone can eat vegan food” wouldn’t be so bad if restaurants served proper vegan food rather than processed flavourless pretend meat and dairy!

Yes, very well put.

I think the problem is that the three main dietary choices are seen as a hierarchy rather than as three different preferences in isolation.

It isn't helped by certain vegans expecting that they should be the default, as everybody 'can' eat vegan - and also a proportion of them insisting that 'people shouldn't be eating meat anyway'.

Meanwhile, in reality, purely by dint of numbers, an omnivorous diet is actually the default - so nobody in a general commercial food setting is going to ignore that (other than a specific vegetarian/vegan restaurant, of course), as it's not as financially worthwhile.

The vegetarians then get caught in the middle and are often ignored/forgotten - thus they end up expected to choose the more restrictive (vegan) direction rather than the less restrictive (omni) direction, which obviously is not going to be acceptable to them.

Believe me, vegans lecturing about cheese will not stop me eating it, vegan cheese is vile! The same with ice cream, DH accidentally bought me a vegan Magnum last year. One mouthful and the rest went in the bin.

Your focusing on the wrong thing.
They should take the meat out of a load of the meat options instead, especially if menu is limited in number of dishes and they don't want to add more.

I’m the opposite I eat meat but no dairy, sometimes I’ll just have a vegan burger but if I don’t fancy it I just ask for a regular meat burger on a vegan bun and vegan cheese. I’ve never not been to a restaurant where they won’t make you what you ask for

Omg **you're!! You're!!!!!

Yes! Annoying! I want some goats cheese!
This is actually one of the things that pushed me back towards eating fish so I coudl regain some menu variety.

I usually just ask if the vegan cheese can be replaced with regular cheese, or ask for clotted cream instead of the vegan alternative.

At least there are a good range of vegetarian/vegan options in the UK. In the US quite a lot of restaurants seem to think vegetarians live on mushrooms, feta, and spinach if they have a vegetarian option at all.

YANBU at all. It's laziness on the part of the restaurants because it's easier to buy in some "meat alternative" than it is to actually cook something that's vegetarian. I cook a lot, making a meat dish taste good is easier than making vegetables taste good but it's not that bloody hard and if you're a professional cook it shouldn't be hard at all.

And it just goes to show that we still have the case in certain quarters that non-meat options are begrudgingly provided. The attitude prevails that one option is provided and it will need to cover everything.

It's the mark of a good restaurant IMO that they've got a variety of vegetarian and vegan options.

YES!!! I and two friends who have all been veggie for decades find this so frustrating! Especially because almost all vegan meals in restaurants are now either a pile of processed crap or curry. Before the rise of veganism, fake meat was not something you saw on 99% of restaurant menus. I don’t understand why it’s taken over, because things like bean burgers and falafel burgers are also vegan! And so much nicer! And as for the plastic cheese…not only is it disgusting and a nutritional disaster, most of it isn’t even that much better for the planet than regular cheese.

Restaurants are businesses and they’ll design a menu which they think will drive the most custom and result in low wastage. The majority of the population is omnivorous and while they can eat vegetarian or vegan food, most are unlikely to opt for a restaurant which is majority vegetarian or vegan so most menus features mostly meat options to reflect that. Vegetarians are a significantly smaller proportion of the population so their share of the menu is smaller to reflect that. And most vegetarians I know (including me) are happy to and regularly eat vegan food so the number of people who would refuse to attend a restaurant because the vegetarian option is also vegan is smaller again and probably not disproportionate to people who don’t go because they just don’t like the options there. I’ve avoided a restaurant before because their only meat free option is goat cheese.

And when a lot of menus only have 3-5 options for each course, then having one vegetarian and one vegan course is disproportionate to the demand and so having one meat free option makes sense. The opportunity cost for catering for the subset of vegetarians who won’t eat vegan food is likely lower than having multiple options. If it were more commercially successful they’d do that.

I wouldn't mind as much if the vegan food on offer was proper food. There is so much amazing vegan food, delicious, wonderful textures, good protein. I've eaten in Buddhist restaurants and Sikh restaurants, and had some of the most delicious meals that even the meat-eaters enjoyed. But in so many places it's fakon all the way: fake meat, fake cheese, fake textures; ultra-processed fake foods.

My neighbours have a dairy farm, I know exactly where cheese comes from thanks.

I never said vegetarians should be happy about it🤷
Literally never have I said that.

What I pointed out is that small number of customers eat vegetarian and vegan in most places and that many restaurants made choice for cost control to make these vegan since both groups can eat them. Not some lazy thing banding together. Business financial decision. Same like it's business finacial decision to offer to majority customers choices, all of which sell. If pork dish won't sell, they will get rid from menu for example. It's not some emotional issue, it's financial. Restaurants are businesses. They sell stuff that makes them money.

When more people stop eating these doshes and feedback, it will force restaurants to move back to V and VE split.

@BeaAndBen

Just check out menus before you eat there. If it’s so important that you don’t want certain foods, you would do that, it’s not hard. I’m sure some people just enjoy whinging and would be list without having shit like this to moan about.

Agree. We went on a cruise recently and there were some very good vegan options. But the options did seem to cover anyone that is vegetarian or dairy intolerant. I do understand it though it’s lazy catering as another poster said.

Looks like OP got exactly what she wanted anyway. Have fun OP, how sad.

Isn't the cost of the food only something like about 10% of the actual cost of running a restaurant, though?

Occupying a chair and table place in an establishment that is costing a lot to run (utilities, business rates staffing etc.) is still quite a significant cost to the business overall even before you order any food.