Well, that’s one of the few cuisines I really dislike so it didn’t occur to me. But thinking back to when I used to go to a group dinner at one of the best Ethiopian restaurants in NYC, yeah, most of the food was vegetarian.
(And all of it was too spicy for me to consume. Sometimes, I could grab the hard-boiled egg before someone smashed it into the rest of the dish. But usually I nibbled on the bread, which tasted like an child’s volcano experiment, and maybe could pick out some bits and pieces that I could get down.)
The Mexican restaurant I most often go to has a big sign warning that their rice is cooked in chicken broth. The food is delicious, and maybe you can get it vegetarian, but if so, only because they are used to vegetarian customers.
Oh, good point. Middle eastern restaurants almost always have vegan options and typically they have substantial enough vegan options that you can make a pleasant meal out of it.
Yeah, if you’re looking vegan, I think that may be easier than Indian, in terms of finding certain dishes that are always vegan. Indian food is generally lacto-vegetarian, so you’ll find ghee, yogurt, and cream used in dishes (and paneer, of course, but that’s in the name of the dish.) There is plenty of vegan Indian food, but you do have to ask to make sure. I know I was working a vegan Indian wedding last year, and the bride had to be very specific with the caterers, and some recipes had to be adapted from the regular menu, as they were lacto-vegetarian, but not vegan.
It certainly is, but lard does show up in places you might not expect, like flour tortillas and tamales (not all flour tortillas and tamales, but it is commonly used in both.)
As scr4 has said, this is not true for non-specialist restaurants. The prevalence of vegetarianism is around 5% in China and Japan, lower than many Western countries. Whereas in India it’s over 30%.
Historically, most Chinese people ate vegetables only because they couldn’t afford meat or fish. So there’s an association with affluence rather than ideology, and the idea that you’d want them to deliberately expend effort to remove all traces of meat or fish isn’t necessarily a natural one.
If Chinese restaurants in the West are now more accustomed to providing true vegetarian dishes, rather than just dishes that include vegetables, it’s more likely to be due to exposure to Western ideological vegetarianism than to Buddhist influences.
Cranberry Township’s going to limit you, I think. I ended up eating at a Primanti Brothers when I was there for business a decade ago. Pittsburgh’s going to give you more options. If you can find a Buddhist chay restaurant, they’re kind of neat with the ersatz meat they can make. That said, here’s Trip Adviser’s Top 10 Vegetarian restaurants in Cranberry https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g52438-zfz10697-Cranberry_Township_Butler_County_Pennsylvania.html
Aladdin’s, with a meze platter or the like, is probably your best bet other than the Indian place you went to.
Given that you’re not in big city, Indian is probably your best bet as far as variety, options, and dishes that make the vegetables, as opposed to cheese or beans, the focus.
East Asian cuisines tend to slip in meat even in vegetable dishes: pork broth, fish stock, shrimp paste, etc. Quite a few dishes that you would think are vegetarian, such as kimchi and miso soup, are not.
I’ll go further and say *Israeli *Middle Eastern - not because it’s better, but because of Jewish dietary rules. If a restaurant is Kosher-dairy, as many are, you can be sure there’s no meat anywhere, but even if it isn’t, out of habit Jewish cuisine rarely puts meat products, like stocks or fats, into dishes that aren’t clearly labeled as being meat-based.
I’m a veg and I prefer Indian over nearly everything else nearly all of the time.
Ethiopian is my 4th choice, behind Italian and Mexican cuisine. I love injera and shiro be kibbe; I can’t remember the other lentil dishes I’ve had but they were all unique and delicious.
You guys fought my ignorance. I’m going to give a lot of credit to American Asian restaurants that I’ve found so helpful to vegetarians. They seem to do better than the average American restaurant in that regard.