Little green 'V's

As you may have gathered from my confession about veggie sausages, with cooking skills like mine I am not about to win Masterchef any time soon. Because of this, and because I am generally quite lazy in the kitchen, I much prefer to eat out as often as I can. In fact, when I win the lotto I fully intend to eat out every night of the week.

Oh no! Not more mushroom risotto!

The only downside to eating out so often could be that I find pasta in tomato sauce and mushroom risotto becoming a major part of my diet. Now don’t get me wrong, they can both be lovely dishes, but familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and I’ve had my fair share of them by now.

Restaurants in the UK & Ireland have come a long way in terms of catering for veggies, with most of them offering at least one main course on the menu, so I suppose we ‘fussy eaters’ should be grateful. And yet it can still feel a bit disappointing when you scan the menu for little green ‘V’s and the one vegetarian ‘option’* is something you’ve had a million times before – or worse, something that you don’t like.

As a vegetarian you see, you must like every vegetable known to mankind.

Now, most vegetarians I know do like 99% of vegetables, (or at least they have grown to like them over the years), but quite a few veggie friends dislike mushrooms in particular and, sadly for them, mushrooms seem to make up a very large proportion of veggie options in restaurants. So if you don’t like mushrooms, for example, then you are likely to find that the main-course alternatives are a few side orders or something else off the starter menu if you’re lucky. (I have resorted to eating a starter followed by a dessert instead of a main-course in the past – although to be fair, dessert-eating isn’t exactly a hardship for me).

"What are you having?"

If I’m visiting a restaurant with a group and it’s not a place I’ve chosen myself, the appearance of just one veggie dish on the menu can almost be embarrassing – pretending to read the menu when really all you’ve done is scan straight down to the solitary little green ‘V’ and thought ‘yeah, that’ll do’; sitting there sipping your water for 10 minutes while everyone else takes an age to read the entire menu and make their decision; and responding to the ‘what are you having?’ question by politely reading off the name of the one veggie dish, rather than replying with ‘well, there’s only one vegetarian option so obviously I’m having that’!

I know, what you’re thinking – I’m just jealous. And you’re right. I am. I’d like to not have to worry about eating in unfamiliar places, in case there’s nothing that I can eat, or in case I’m forced to ‘make a fuss’ and ask for something that’s not on the menu.

I really can’t describe then how exciting it is to go to a vegetarian restaurant and know that I can choose whatever I want on the menu. It’s better than a birthday, it’s better than Christmas; in fact it ranks right up there alongside going on holiday.

And it’s so nice not to have to scan the menu for those little green ‘V’s.

If you have any vegetarian restaurant recommendations we'd love to hear from you.

Comments

[Heather]

This is my favourite veggie restaurant in the world, Mirch in Leicester!
http://www.everymenu.co.uk/leicester/indian/mirch_masala-453.htm
No looking for little green Vs, and a comprehensive around-the-world menu with an Indian slant.
Heavenly!