What kind of food would you like to see on a vegan menu?

I am starting my own restaurant within the next two years, and am having trouble deciding what food to put on the menu. If you are Vegan- or not, what food items would make you come back for more? You can list drinks, smoothies, appetizers, main courses, etc.This restaurant will be located in Las Vegas! Thank you!

I would love to see signature dishes (a minimum of two) from every possible cuisine. It might be a little hard but at least you don't have to compete with established restaurants. I would strongly advise you to limit fake meat and fake cheese dishes. Not everyone likes this stuff and it does not represent authentic vegan cuisine. The only vegan place in my town focuses on fake meats and their food is nasty and overpriced. I would never go to a vegan place to eat soy hot dogs.

In no particular order, this is what I like:

Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai: any tofu dishes, noodles, curries, spring rolls.
Japanese: tempura, miso soup
Indian: lentil & rice dishes, chickpea curries, saucy-type vegetable curries (by the way, almond butter and cashew butter replace yogurt and cream beautifully)
Middle East/Greek: couscous, hummus, vine leaves, baba ghanouj, foul medammes (a type of bean salad with parsley and olive oil)
(did you know the authentic baba ganouj does NOT contain mayonnaise? Yuck @ mayo in baba ghanouj!).
Italian: minestrone soup, gnocchi with sundried tomato pesto
African: peanut stew

Caribbean, Mexican and Latin American: quite a few options, but again, focus on vegan dishes that already exist rather than attempting to veganize a vegetarian dish. It is easier to veganize meat than to veganize dairy, in my opinion.

The best Vegan lunch I ever had was a "hamburger" made from ground up veggies and nuts. It was so good, you'd never miss the meat.

There's a place where I live (south west Australia) where they make AWESOME vegetable crepe stacks. They're amazing! Other good things I've tried are nut loafs with salsa. Mushroom & sour cream/spinach & ricotta pasties. Exotic salads with pasta, rice, couscous. Vege lentil pattie burgers always go down well. Pasta dishes like vegie lasagne, pumpkin ravioli ...

Wow, I'm feeling hungry.

Also when contemplating what I want to eat (this is going to sound crazy but it works!) I visualise a map of the world and scan over the countries and think of their national dishes and you will come up with the biggest range of food! Mexican (chilli con carne), Indian, Chinese, Japanese (sushi) , Italian (pasta, risotto), French deserts and pastries, Irish stews, Spanish paella, Thai (egg and rice noodle dishes) ... and then you can create vegan versions of these.

Varity of salads

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)

There's a vegetarian restaurant in San Antonio called Green and it specializes in vegie versions of comfort food. They have Frito Pie, Vegie burgers, Meatloaf (vegie) and mashed potatoes with gravy, noodles and "beef" but the best thing on the menus is french fried sweet potatoes.

I was at this vegan restaurant not to long ago, a WIDE variety of ORIENTAL vegan food is great, especially rice and noodles with vegan chicken. It would be great!

Lambtofu

I'm no vegan, but I'll come to your restaurant if you make something with portabello mushrooms!
Oh, try making a smoothie with avocados, it sounds wierd, but they are pretty good... yay for monounsaturated fats!!!

I really, really think you should model your restaurant after the Krishna restaurants. I used to go to Govinda's in Denver, CO, and they were vegan, and ALWAYS busy. If I still had the cookbook they had I would have sent it to you. I gave it to a friend that eats vegan. I would say my most favorite they made was spinach filo. It was spinach inside filo with cottage cheese, or something like cheese...

Here is their menu: http://www.krishnadenver.com/buffet.html

I am sure if you called them, you could purchase their cookbook, I think it is called, "Karma free food" something like that... Good Luck with your restaurant.

lentil, tofu , eggplant, split pea soup, veggie burgers