To expect hotels and restaurants to provide a decent vegetarian food choice!

[fifitot]

Have just come back from a weekend away and then 2 day course with work. Therefore ate a hotel for meals - both expensive hotels I might add.

Now am a longstanding vegetarian, I am not expecting a green gourmet style veggie feast for my tea every night, I recognise there are limitations on hotel kitchens etc. However I get fed up of bloody pasta every time!

There were only 2 veggy things on the whole menu at one of the hotels so rotated between pasta and salad!

One hotel had a set evening menu and for your £25, if you ate meat or fish, this was great value. However for the same price I basically got given pasta and tomato sauce - probably cost less than a quid to make.

Some places are better than others and will cook you something if you ask but lots won't and helpfully point out the salmon or other fish on the menu.

Just a little bit of imagination please!

But if it's an Italian restaurant they're hardly likely to be into thai spices or curry are they? So it's polenta, risottos, pasta, soups, salads.

No need to be boring though, I agree.

this place is good

sample menu
Five Cheese Pasta with Tomato and Basil
Sweetcorn and Sweet Potato Chilli Cakes
Mediterranean Vegetable Bake
Broccoli and Mushroom Pasta Bake
Spring Vegetables in Cream and Mustard
Garlic and Mushroom Filled Pancake
Lebanese Musaka
Walnut and Goats Cheese Quiche
Vegetable Chilli
Lentil, Carrot and Courgette Lasagne

this place also serves a good varity of veggie food but does include italain

you really shouldn't wonder what happens in the kitchen of any hotel or restaurant

This is my favourite restaurant ever check out the menu. Yum... Although it does involve lasagne...

I actually love Italian food - done well but not some half cocked pasta mush cooked up in a hotel kitchen.

If I want to eat out I always go to a Greek, Italian or Indian restaurant. It's just that you often have to fall in with the majority, especially if it's family and grin and bear a crap meal while they tuck into a variety of foods.

italian food is very varied, and if you go to an italian restaurant, you should expect them to be able to cater for veggies!
even if they don't do pizza, they should still be able to cook some pasta that's got some goodness in it.

indian is usually the best for veggie food: because they have a lot of veggie choice (a lot of them abstain from meat completely)

Oh, and why do so many Indian and Chinese restaurants/takeaways just describe their dishes as "vegetable this/that", e.g. "vegetable jal farezi", "sweet and sour vegetables". It just sounds so random, is it too much to ask that they list what veggies are in it? They wouldn't put "sweet and sour meat" on the menu, would they?

YANBU. I am not veggie, but we eat mostly veggie food at home (as I dislike most meats) and normally order the veggie option if I'm going to a black tie dinner or wedding or whatever (where it's a set menu).

I love Saf. Great restaurant - and equally appealing to non-veggies like me. Mmmmm I do miss Saf since moving out of London.

That's terrible

But do you actually say anything to these establishments that offer this sub-standard vegetarian fare? If no one complains, they will see no reason to improve.
Or vote with your feet and don't eat at these places! I understand you don't always have that option if it's a work or group function, but you can still try and call in advance and tell them you are a large group coming, and if they don't provide decent veg*n options, you will take your business elsewhere.

We mainly eat out at vegn restaurants, our favourite local Indian place I know and trust, or somewhere like Strada Pizza/Pizza Express/Wagamama's, where you know the menu is a little varied in the vegn department. Chinese and Thai are usually decent too, though you do always have to confirm that they don't use fish or shrimp paste in their vegetarian dishes.

Things are definitely improving.

Indaian and chinese restaurants put vegtable this and vegtable that onm the menu as they then can put seasonal vegtables or whatthey can get at market - if it said cauliflower and they can't get good cauliflowers - then they don't have to worry.

So what dishes would be good for a veggie on a htle bistro menu?

Ivykaty, for me (and I am vegan, so would be great if you could cater for vegans as well as vegetarians!), I would be happy with risotto or pasta as long as they weren't just so boring.
Pasta and a tin of tomatoes - dull.
Rice and a tin of mushrooms - dull.

A large variety of vegetables with pasta or rice would be an improvement, with lots of herbs and spices.

I do like roasted vegetables, but these need to be provided with a little more generosity, and something a bit more substantial, like potatoes and/or sweet potatoes - just roasted aubergine/peppers/onion doesn't provide a lot of bulk or texture.

Minty baked aubergine, with garlic, and a side dish of tomatoey chickpeas and couscous with almonds and chopped apricot - that would be nice!

Thai green curry with lots of veg, and tofu.

Just something that sounds like the chef has made an effort, and we aren't just a lazy afterthought.

I do kind of get what the issue is, in that the meal option for a vegetarian is not as wide as for a carnivore.

I would like to point out that elsewhere in Europe, the USA and Australia you are really stuck for options. I recall a friend of mine that used to work for an airline, and was a vegetarian. She basically either ate just fries, or had to compromise and eat some kind of meat, otherwise she wouldn't actually be able to eat anything.

In the UK we do have a diverse array of cuisine available to us, so the options ARE there. Elsewhere they simply aren't.

If you love Indian Food, or Thai food or whatever, then that is likely to be the best places for you to choose from a wider selection, than in a restaurant that caters to mostly meat eating clientele.

As numerous as vegetarians are, they are in the minority.

I don't eat pork, so that rules out a ton of stuff when I eat out. My own mother picked some ham wrapped dish for her main course when she got married. With the ham removed the meal was worse than tasteless...

Problem is, for meat eating restaurateurs, that they often just think a vegetarian dish is one without meat, and that cheese etc is still acceptable, but for many of you, it is not.

I get your boredom, really I do, but tbh it's a choice you have made for whatever reason, and in general, hotels and restaurants ARE providing Veggie options, but perhaps in your eyes, not very imaginative ones. But at least there IS a choice.

Here's a challenge to all you veggies...

Give us the name/description of your fave veggie dish.

Then perhaps people will see what kind of food is desired. DH is a Head Chef, and I always tell him to make sure there is a vegetarian option on his specials board, I'd be delighted to get him to try new ideas..

groundhogs, for me, it's less that there's not much choice, it's that what choice there is is just sooooo boring and lacklustre.
Nothing wrong with pasta or rice, but so many caterers (and ime, the more expensive the establishment, the worse it is!) think a tin of chopped tomatoes mixed into some pasta is sufficient. When presenting risotto, do so with more than just a limp mushroom from a tin - loads of fresh veg, and most vegetarians would be happier.

I listed some of my favourite dishes above.

And salad for starters - yawwwwwwwwn.
A funky soup would be an improvement, with some fresh chunky bread. Vegetable tempura? Yum. And very easy.

I will say, I've travelled well in Australia and America, as a vegan, and actually, I found them fantastic. Definitely agree that mainland Europe is dire though, but again, I do think it's getting better than it was ten years ago.

Maybe more than 1 'choice' would be nice and don't charge the same rate for it as you would the meat option - that would be nice for hotels to do.

There is tons of stuff that could be done - I suggest chefs buy the Delia veggie cookbook. Veg shepherds pie in the winter with all the trimmings is a good one when all your mates are having a roast dinner for example.

As I said earlier, I don't expect the world, especially when it's a hotel and they don't specifically cater for vegetarians - but really some of these places, which are very expensive, could make more of an effort.

Also can I reiterate what I said earlier about liking to have more than 1 texture/taste on my plate (although it might just be me that has an issue with this?).

A plate of risotto or pasta can often be so boring with one identical mouthful after another -get some chunks of vegetables in there, or include a small side salad of something tasty and different, maybe with nuts or a slightly spicy dressing, or a slice or 2 of 'posh' garlic bread

i know what you mean Norbert: you want a meal that tastes like a meal, not an item!

there's a pub in one of our local villages that does a veggie sausage & mash with onion gravy.
the sausages are proper vegetable sausages, not fake meat ones, and the whole meal is delicious.
it's exactly the same as the meat version of sausage and mash, but no meat.

i did go to another local pub that had sausage and mash on the menu for veggies, but the mash was awful and the gravy was just like water.(actually, the mash was like water too!)
plus, it was swimming around the mash with millions of peas. it was disgusting.

the second pub has apparantly won local catering awards.

I generally eat at well known places to avoid the problem of veg food for me! Though there is a fantastic Indian restaurant that I went to last night and their korma's are to die for!

I hate when it's a set price menu and I get offered only one meal (which is usually crap tbh) and meaties have a nice big choice. Then I have to pay the same price as them even thouh mine probably only cost about £3 max to make

I think the main problem is that chefs think "Shit, vegetarian, what do I do?!" Whereas they should just think "Okay, without meat, easy." because it really is easy. For chain restaurants, well, they're just shit in general for vegetarians but are getting better. I love whetherspoons as there is one pretty much everywhere and they have that sweet potato curry which would keep me happy forever

I was veggie for about 22 years. Me and dh would see who could say veg lasagne before we entered the pub/hotel/bar wherever we were eating. The lasagne thing was about 12 years ago so things must have changed.

I'm not a proper veggie (eat fish), but it can be a pain. Russia is the worst, as most of their food is meat based (even soups!) and the vegetables that they have tend to be either cabbage, mushroom or potato. Fortunately I've managed to coincide visits with lent (when they're supposed to not eat as much meat), but was staying in a 5 star hotel and still had problems. 95% of the menu was meat based. I then decided to order the vegetarian looking risotto that they had, but asked when ordering. No, it had seafood in it and was cooked using chicken stock. In the end they gave me spaghetti with tomato sauce.

In Kruger Park in South Africa at one of the camps it was bad as well. The shop pretty much only stocked meat and some tins, and the vegetarian main option in the restaurant was:

• Boiled potatoes with some plastic cheese on top, and boiled vegetables. It was disgusting, but I was so hungry I ate it.

And in France (Lille), DP and I went over for a friend's house warming, and a whole bunch of us went out for lunch, and had a set menu. When choosing it, they had specified that there were three people who didn't eat meat (but ate fish), so one of the options had to be meat free. We all pre-ordered, had starters, fine, no problem, really delicious. Then the mains arrived. It was supposed to be a salmon dish, but when it arrived it had lardons of bacon in it. We then complained, saying that we had specified that one of the options shouldn't have meat in it, waiter got all huffy, and eventually they managed to find a replacement.

i think the problem is that (imo) veggie food works best when you are served lots of different things, this gives best balance (in terms of taste and nuitrition and texture). This is a completely different kind of cooking that you get in most resturtants (particullary nowadays where the trend is to keep in simple).

I think they need to be a little more imaginitive not about the food they serve but they way they price. So the veggie could have a small bowl of pasta as a starter and then tuck into a mixed mezze of starters with a side salad as a main.

Mmm curry
we are off to NYC (any excuse to mention it )and it's one of the best places to eat as a veggie. Loads of different cultures mixed together, no one looks at you like an alien for not wanting meat and it's the only holiday I have been on where I haven't lived off cheese sandwiches! Oh and the veggie chilli at the food court at south st seaport mmmmmmmmmmm can't wait!

But the very very very worst thing of all is the fact that while your companions are tucking into steak, salmon, lobster... you are eating what is essentially wallpaper paste (if it is the non-egg variety of pasta)with a tin of chopped tomatoes on top and a sprig of basil (and paying through the nose for it too).