My daughter lives a couple hours away, so we meet halfway, in Cranberry, PA, for dinner every so often. She is a vegetarian, and I usually eat vegetarian when we dine together.
What cuisine do you think offers the best options for vegetarians? IME I would say Indian food fits the bill. We ate at an Indian place last night and there were at least as many vegetarian choices as meat options, and they were all delicious.
Italian also offers a lot of options, including the often criminally overlooked eggplant parmesan, (“Melanzane alla parmigiana”) which when lovingly prepared (and served along a big jug of cheap Sangiovese) is the finest vegetarian dish known to the people.
Add the miriad of pastas with various sauces, along with fresh salad, and Italian is perhaps one of the least meat-dependant major cuisines around)
I’ll be boring and simply back you up on your choice of Indian food.
I’m not a vegetarian myself, but I always end up ordering vegetarian dishes, with Tarka Dhal being a consistent go to.
Indian, definitely, in my experience. Just about everything else would be hit and miss, I think, unless it’s a dedicated vegetarian restaurant.
Asian. Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc. They have had a lot more vegetarians for a long time and don’t seem to be meat obsessed the way we are.
Depends on if you’re OK with broth made from fish or meat. It’s hard to avoid those in Japanese and Chinese cuisines.
Buddhist cuisine is a subset of Asian cuisine and mostly vegan, but you would only find that in restaurants that specialize in it, and there probably aren’t many outside Asia.
The problem is going to be exacerbated by your typical “small town” menu options, which are all going to be very meat heavy. Italian is not necessarily a meaty cuisine, but your typical “Italian Family Restaurant” in small town PA is going to have a very limited vegetarian selection, consisting of a plain pasta with sauce and maybe a cheese ravioli. Anything interesting is going to be meat based.
Likewise with a lot of Asian places, Thai/Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese aren’t necessarily meat based but most conventional American restaurants serve what I call “gratuitous meat,” meaning the star of the dish is the sauce and they’ll huck a ton of whatever meat you want into it with 4 pieces of broccoli. Compounding this is that a lot of restaurant owners don’t really grock the concept of vegetarianism, so the “vegetarian” section on a lot of these menus just means the main thing they’re hucking into the sauce is vegetables, not that there’s no meat or meat products in the sauce.
Indian is usually pretty safe, the ubiquity of chicken tikka masala notwithstanding, since so much of India is vegetarian the sauces are almost never meat based. Pizza and Mexican are good choices too, although some black beans are cooked in a meat base.
Steakhouses are rough, and BBQ of any kind is the absolute worst. No, I don’t want to eat a collection of sides, and even 75% of the sides have meat in them.
Personally my go to is any bar or American restaurant with a decently sized menu. Even small town American restaurants will have a veggie burger on the menu, and french fries are hands down my favorite thing to eat, plus, you know, beer. Indian restaurants rarely have good beer.
I have vegetarian friends and we’ve been through the eating out problem with them. Japanese and Chinese restaurants have been quite open about what they offer, occasionally having only fish and meat broths, but still willing to prepare foods without them. They have all seemed respectful of vegetarian needs. I assume the Buddhist cultural influence in Asia ingrains that in the food culture. I can’t imagine any Japanese or Chinese restaurant that can’t offer a meal of rice and vegetables. They may not make it for you, but they could.
You have to be careful with east Asian food, because there’s often lurking fish sauce or pork broth. Yeah, some Chinese restaurants have good vegetarian options, but many don’t.
Was it here that a vegetarian was upset at an Italian place where she asked if the sauce on the ravioli had meat, and was assured it didn’t, only to be served meat ravioli in a vegetable sauce?
If I am dining with a vegetarian, I either go Indian or let them pick the place. If I am dining with a vegan, I let them pick the place, or just cook for them myself.
It really depends on the size and makeup of the market, and IME small town Chinese restaurants are happy to tell you that something is vegetarian and then deliver it with pork bits in it. Plus, rice and vegetables without any kind of tofu or other protein can be disappointing. There’s a difference between getting necessary calories and having a satisfying meal with your old man.
I don’t think I’ve been to anything that could be described as a small town Chinese restaurant, but I can understand the problem. I guess these days there are small town Indian restaurants also, not that long ago finding a big town Indian restaurant could be difficult.
The protein issue is the tough one for vegetarians outside of vegetarian restaurants. There’s always salad and potatoes around everywhere, but those hardly make nice meals.
Most Kosher restaurants can also provide a vegetarian meal. They won’t lie to you about the food containing meat, but they may not have much interesting to eat either.
I’d be shocked if it exists in Cranberry, PA, but Ethiopian cuisine does vegetarian really well, and they don’t have that East Asian fish thing. Probably have to go into Pittsburgh to find it, though.
There (used to be) an Ethiopian restaurant in East Liberty (near Pittsburgh). I last was there with my daughter when she was ten, so 18 years ago.
Third vote for Ethiopian.
Why hasn’t anyone thought of Ethiopian food, with its delicious injera bread and many spices?
Mexican food is quite vegetarian friendly.
This is by far the tastiest IME.
I mean, I love Indian food, but Ethiopian is amazing.
Vietnamese restaurants often have tofu options and usually don’t cook them in meat. Though I’m thinking of UK Vietnamese restaurants, so YMMV.
Absolutely not. Asian cultures in general aren’t very accommodating to non-standard food preferences - they generally take the attitude of “if you don’t want meat, why did you come to our restaurant?”. Almost everything has fish-based broth or meat-based broth, or both. If some Asian restaurants in the US are accommodating to vegetarians, that’s the Modern American influence, not Buddhist.
I think Indian food is the exception because there is a substantial vegetarian population in India. There isn’t in Japan or China - even earlier in history, Buddhist monks themselves were vegetarian, but they didn’t force vegetarianism on the rest of the populace.
Isn’t it common for Mexican restaurants to fry everything in lard?
Yeah, it’s definitely one of those things where you have to ask. Some do; some don’t. Lard is often used as a flavoring (like in refried beans), it may be used in flour tortillas or tamales (around here, I assume most tamales are made with lard in the dough.) So things that look like they should be vegetarian may not be. I’ve seen Mexican restaurants that advertise “no lard” in the way Asian restaurants advertise “no MSG” (and I usually don’t go to those restaurants for that reason). So it is out there. But I’ve also seen Mexican restaurants mark vegetarian friendly items on the menu, as there is awareness of the market, at least around here.