Do mainstream restaurants piss you off with their lack of variety in vegetarian, or even vegan, choices?

I have never seen anything vegan on a restaurant menu and vegetarian options always seem to be the same few pathetic items. What would you like to see on the menu? I am planning on opening a small restaurant and would like to cater for all.

Oooo! What a good idea! Yes I do get sick of having to choose between veg lasagne, veg kiev and veg bakes. So boring.

I'd like to see more meat replacements in restaurants. Quorn, tofu, soy etc.

I love pasta and rice, and ethnic cuisine. I also love a roast meal - potatoes roasted in rape seed oil, roast veg and quorn slices and yorkshire pudding. Yum.

Don't know if you've already looked, but there are some yummy veggie/vegan recipes on PETA website:

http://www.peta2.com/STUFF/s-recipereal....

Edit: I see a lot of meat-eaters are telling us to go to veggie/vegan specific restaurants instead of moaning. Well, don't know about you guys, but I don't particularly like eating in restaurants on my own. None of my friends are veggie, I can't expect them to eat at a veggie restaurant just for me. Which is why it would be nice if there were more veggie options.
Even if you aren't veggie/vegan, there's no law to say you HAVE to eat meat.

I'm not a vegetarian, myself, but I often order vegetarian food at restaurants because they tend to be cheaper and lower in calories. However, another definite trend is that the vegetarian dishes tend to be either timidly or recklessly seasoned. Either they are bland to the point of inedibility, or they have so much pepper and herbs that the flavor is overwhelming, as if they're trying to compensate for something. I don't know.

Since I'm a lactose-intolerant meat-eater, what pisses me off more than the lack of vegetarian options is the sheer number of dishes that contain cheese, butter, cream, or all three. It's so hard to find a good meat dish that won't make my stomach hurt. Sometimes I think that America is even more biased against lactose-intolerant people that it is against vegetarians.

Yes. My problem with lack of variety on the menu is normally associated with pork. Here in Switzerland you can go into a restaurant and they only have pork - not even a vegetarian alternative. I have Turkish friends, and although pork is not forbidden on religious grounds, some do not like the taste because it's not readily available in Turkey. I was once in a restaurant, scanned the menu and said, 'Lets go back to Bern, where I know restaurants with a better variety.' My sister.in-law's husband asked my step son, 'What's the matter with her?' To which he answered, 'She's a Muslim.' Which I'm not.
Surely restaurants should try to come up with a menu which accommodates all their guests.

I KNOW!! I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I'm highly considering become a vegan. And when/if I do, I won't be happy about the lack of selection those darned, cheap, arrogant resturants have to offer.

My best friend is vegan, and she goes to this either Vegan resturant or Raw resturant, whichs she says is really good. I'll have to try it sometime.

Yeah, it bugs me, which is why I only eat in places that have vegan options unless I have no choice (i.e., family event). Vote with your dollars, baby.

What drives me batty is Thai places that have a "vegetarian" section and then soak all the dishes with fish sauce. Um, hello, fish is not vegetarian!!!

As for your place, it depends on the type of restaurant you're opening. One local place used to have a lovely tofu dish until they changed it--it used to be slices of tofu, and now it's a yucky mushy tofu cake. You could marinate and grill tempeh (a fermented soybean cake) and serve with steamed greens and roasted potatoes or a rice pilaf. Seitan (wheat gluten) is tricky to get right, but if you have a sous chef who knows how to do it, a grilled seitan dish is also nice. I adapted a meat dish to make a vegan fessendjen with seitan.

I'm not opposed to pasta, as long as it's a creatively done dish.

You could also do veggie-packed sandwiches with a side of fries. Just make sure the fries aren't cooked in the same fryer as meat items.

Check the menus of veg-friendly places to get inspiration.

GREAT IDEA - I hope you live near me.

I love roast potatos with the rest of a dinner (I have cauli chees grill, yorkshire puds and lots of choice of veg) minus the meat but they are always covered in meat fat, so that would be good for starters.

I don't like pasta and that always seems to be the veggie option. I would love to see a veggie pie with potatos, carrots, peas onion etc

I love a really nice cheese salad or veggie kiev with new potatos or saute potatos.

If you do make jacket potatos - make sure they are properly oven cooked with lovely crispy skins, not microwaved mush.

I know I am sick of eating vegetarian stir fry at pubs!! And one pub I went to used Oyster sauce in there stir fry!!! Like seriously? And with hokkien noodles definably not vegan!!

If there was a Veggie/Vegan restaurant near me I'd go..but I make do with going to places that cater to the mainstream of the local population. How & why does one get mad at a place/person for doing what is in their own best interest?

Lots of luck with your endeavor!

that takes sum thinking bout but you are wright about main stream restaurants

its really annoying i know.

where s your restaurant going to be?

i know i always end up having veg lasagne, which i like but not every place i go to eat! id love anything with goas cheese, tomatoes, pasta , or veggie tapas is gorgeous like patatas bravas is really nice and salads with rocket and cheese and olive oil are all tasty and i would love them!

Generally speaking, yes the lack of choice and variety is frustrating. That said, I'm an amazing cook so I prefer to eat at home.

I'd love to see more spicy ethnic vegan cuisine at restaurants.

Best of luck with your vegan-friendly establishment!

i will always choose to eat at a vego place rather than a meat place which offers veg dishes. Why? To support my community.
I don't want anybody who provides exclusively vegetarian or vegan foods to struggle. I want them to succeed. And I don't feel particularly bad if meat restaurants go out of business, because I see them as part of the problem.

So I never go to mainstream restaurants. The vego restaurants are so successful in my town, even meateaters are opening pure vegetarian places (Mr Natural Pizza has two stores in Melbourne owned by a very nice meateater).

If you can afford the risk of opening a vego only place in your area, I say go for it.

ALL food providers annoy me - not just restaurants, but mainly takeaways, as they usually have NOTHING for Vegans at all.

When I'm starving I usually have to make do with a vegetarian thing, as finding anything to eat away from home that's Vegan is usually impossible.

It's amazing how even when I ask for a vegetarian sandwich in a takeaway shop I get pointed towards tuna, and then to prawns, and get an amazed face when I say those things aren't vegetarian! Most people have no clue at all what veggie is let alone VEGAN.

If you open a vegan restaurant for godssake please offer tasty food that meat-eaters will like too, and not ALL nasty tofu and nut mixes! Cheers and good luck.

Not at all.

Feels like D茅j脿 vu........ LOL

Well I go to this *great* Thia place, they make fantastic food. Tia green curry with veggies & tofu, red curries, veggie sushi, grilled tofu n veg skewers, veg curry puffs. Heaps of stuff. I also tried a great tomato based cous cous at this italian place, it had mushrooms, zuchinni, eggplant... it was really good. I guess it depends on what sort of theme you want for your restaraunt. Maybe if you choose a theme first, then the dishes will become easier to choose. Good luck with your restaraunt, it sounds like a great idea. =0)

most places do have veggie or vegan options. if they don't, you can usually ask them to leave out the meat and add veggies. They are generally more than happy to do so.

No, they don't.

You can't expect restaurants to offer a large variety of choices for such a tiny portion of the population. It doesn't work with their bottom line. That's what vegetarian and vegan restaurants are for.

Would it be wrong for meaters to complain that vegetarian and vegan restaurants don't offer enough choices for meaters? Yes, it would be wrong and meaters are 98% of the population in the U.S.

If it pisses you off you need to change the restaurant you go to, not try and change the restaurant you go to. I think that makes sense...LOL

Most menus ive seen have vegetarian options.
atleast in my town

In response to a lot of the other replies on here, while vegetarians may be a small segment of the population at present, vegetarian eating is NOT. In fact, the vast majority of sales and increase in the veggie dining market have come from meat eaters having a night off from meat. And why not, too?

My meat eating friends have thoroughly enjoyed their experience in vegetarian restuarants more often than not. Newflash to ppl and especially restuaranteurs: eating a tasty vegetarian meal sometimes doesn't make you a "traitor" to other meat eaters, any more than it makes you a full blown vegetarian or vegan.

So I love veggie/vegan restaurants, and will continue to demand veggie choices wherever I go. Because veggie eating is here to stay.

A lot! Especially when you ask for vegetarian/vegan food, and then they propose salads or French Fries.
Or worse, they propose chicken or seafood/fish. :P
Being vegan I have asked quite often if a meal can be altered and if its possible to leave out a certain ingredient.
Sometimes they are very friendly, but often I get the answer, that this can't be done. Well..
Eventually we go out very seldom now, because the only good vegetarian restaurant in this town closed down last year (I live in Athens/Greece with a city population of over 4 million people - how about that?)

I always like to see local produce, the more local and fresher the better. Above all, it must have a decent steak...

No, and I wouldn't expect them to - they are as you say, mainstream. The mainstream is neither veggie nor vegan. Not a veggie myself, but have friends who are and this is what I told them when they brought this up - A restaurant is at heart a business. They are concerned with running a successful business. Everything else is secondary. It is a very hard occupation and vegetarians and vegans are a minority. So you are not catered to. To stock veggie specific foods such as quorn, tofu, soy etc. will cause them to lose money as they spoil and get thrown out because only 4 people ordered that in a month. It is a numbers game. Support restaurants you like that meet your needs, open your own place...but don't expect the world to change for you. You chose your lifestyle knowing all of this. I have never walked into a vegetarian restaurant and gotten upset because there wasn't steak on the menu.

A similar question was asked recently.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

To answer your question, yes, it does. We definitely need more vegan, vegetarian and veg*n-friendly restaurants. There is only one such place in my town and it is staffed by a bunch of rude, pretentious women who were aghast that I was dining there alone (i.e. without a date). At one point, it seemed like they were going to refuse to serve me. I certainly won't go back there, vegan or not.

Unfortunately, too many vegan places suffer from the 'clique syndrome' and that is just because of their monopoly over the limited vegan clientele. Make your place a casual family restaurant, and encourage your staff to treat everyone equally.

at most they have a bunch of sauteed veggies, but nothing that heavily incorporates a vegetarian style of cooking. if u examine East-Asian and Southeast Asian cultures there are a plethora of ways to make entire meals out of veggies, not just as a peripheral item. The key is to use appropriate spices to flavor the vegetables (cumin and fennel are key). Then serve the vegetables with some rice or pita bread. That constitutes a filling meal.

Its ridiculous with the amount of vegetarians there are around. I'm getting sick of nut roast and canneloni. Try a veggy lasagne, spag bol with quorn, mozzarella in breadcrumbs -yum!

Yes I'm sick of broccolli with cheese all the time! <sighs>

yess,
i was at a restaurant last night and there were 3 vegetarian options,
erggh.

That would be the best bet.....I don't see why a normal restaurant should go out of its way to provide a vast choice of veggie meals when most customers dont want that.....it would be a very good idea if there were more high street veggie restaurants, but why there isn't already is that they would go out of business.

One of my favourite restaurants is a Thai which does a lovely dish using quorn.

Yes, I do agree. I am neither vegetarian nor vegan but having worked in restaurants in a country, where the family diet is mainly based on no meat food with meat usual at weekends and special occasions it was rather disappointing at the lack of interest in producing these wonderful plain wholesome dishes in the restaurant business. I too was looking to open my business at the end of this month but unfortunately, I had a hart-attack and I am not allowed to work for a while as it was rather serious. My family don't want me to carry on but there really is no stopping me. I will not have a restaurant but none the less I shall cater for the vegetarian and vegan. Good luck in your venture I am sure once word gets out you will be very successful. A word of advise always use the best ingredients these together with good service will never let you down

I totally agree with you. I swear, if I have to eat one more thing with goats cheese or "mediterranean vegetables" I will scream.

What I'd like to see is alot more pasta, particularly pasta with lemon sauce. I'd also like to see more bean/lentil-based dishes. And - and this is so simple I can't believe no-one has thought of this - how about normal meat recipes but with vegetarian alternatives? You know, like lasagne with vegetables, or a roast with quorn. It's not difficult!

Good for you for planning your own restaurant, it's nice to see someone being proactive.