Food for All, Good for All

 A Manifesto in Three Parts         
                                                                                                        Part Three


Three reasons why restaurants should think about stepping up their game 

By including more imaginative and delicious vegetable-based dishes on menus, Austin restaurants can attract and keep a variety of diners.

                                                                 Potential loss of current customers

Previously, I mentioned that vegetarians make up a rather small percentage of Americans so seems our preferences are less important. I can understand that from a business perspective; corralling the whole herd is more profitable than chasing a maverick. However, consider that most folks dine out in groups and if there is one vegetarian they are likely to sway the vote toward a place that has something intriguing for them to eat as the carnivores can find something satisfying nearly anywhere. Thereby, the kitchen that disregards us loses all four diners. The chefs that extend their creativity to veg-positive dishes feeds them all.

                    Potential Increase in customer base, from far and near

Portland and Seattle rate in the top five of the Most Veg-Friendly Cities in North America and a lot of those folks migrate or travel to Austin with expense accounts, hungry and accustomed to finer fare than a limp pile of spring mix.

Vegetarians can be mouthy. We Yelp!. We Post and Share and Like! We unite, network and belong to Meetup groups and Societies and radical activist organizations -all about what we eat! It very well may be worth restaurants making some effort to feed us so we can blog and brag about them. 

                                           
                                                   Being a progressive force for good

Meanwhile, all kinds of people are making effort to eat less meat, to make healthier choices on occasion or everyday. Last year, Austin ranked #11 in the 30 Fittest Cities in America, according to The Daily Beast, and all those triathletes and Pilates junkies prefer leaner meals to help prolong the life of their lycra.

I am here to help restaurants to entice us and bring our omnivorous friends along; to help them create delicious meat-free dishes by rethinking ingredients they already have and adding a few new staples.

Meanwhile stay tuned for the sparkly spots that do conjure up veggie wizardry and please, hit me up with your faves too.

                                          
.

 

Cheesy As 1,2,3

A Manifesto in Three Parts               
                                                                                           Part Two

According to Zagat, Austinites eat out an average of 3.5 meals per week, which sounds pretty low to me. 3.7 times at a taco shack,  3.2 times at trailer, 3.1 times at a bona fide sit-on-down-and-order restaurant, more likely. Whether it's three or nine times, it seems that vegetarians have the same three dishes to choose from, week after week. How long before we get discouraged and quit going out? You do the math, I'm too hungry.


                                                           The Vegetable Triumvirate 
 

                                                                                I

If I can't find a menu online I'll call a restaurant I haven't visited before to ask about their vegetarian options. Here's how that goes: "Um, well, we have salads?" So I ask, "And do any of your salads not have meat in them?" "Uh, yeah! There's a no, um, no. Oh, there's a side salad?"


                                                                               II

Beyond that, I may be offered a plate of zucchini and squash with a portobello mushroom. Firstly, zucchini is squash so don't try to make them sound like two distinct, special things. Summer Squash must have a half-life, as ubiquitous as it is. Few people yearn for it or want to eat it more than a few times a year, forget three times a week.

Nextly, three damp, smushy lumps on a plate?  My companion is enjoying roasted wild salmon with a candied satsuma wasabi glaze and kaffir lime pistachio parsnip puree with juniper-braised fiddleheads. My meal is a scolding. I feel like Cinderella, way before the improbable Prince and impossible pumps. I could inquire about every ingredient in the side dishes, and if it doesn’t offend the Chef, pluck a little of this from one entree, and that from another (but without the prosciutto) and try to assemble a little solitary potluck supper. And so everyone at the table is bringing up When Harry Met Sally, again. It gets funnier every time!

                                                                              III

Veggie Royale at Bouldin Creek Cafe

And then there's the pervasive Veggie Burger, or as I call it, bread on a bun. Or gummy paste on a bun. I will eat the daylights out of Bouldin Creek Cafe's hearty, savory, nourishing, enchanting Veggie Royale but lots of the others are boring; a rubbery slab or sticky blob. They feel like a prepackaged frozen afterthought. A meager concession.


                                                                             (IV)

Ok, there is a fourth category I encounter, brought to you by the Dairy Lobby, in which the vegetarian choice is the most bloated, unhealthy, greazy dish on the menu.

Four cheese tortellini in a rich cream sauce. Four cheese ravioli in a rich tomato cream sauce, four cheese lasagna, cheese enchiladas, cheese quesadillas, you get the idea. This is such an obvious attempt to kill us off I hesitate to honor the plot with the mention.

Next,

 I'll talk about why it makes good business sense for restaurants to step up their game.

To Eat, Perchance To Dine

A Manifesto in Three Parts
                                                       Part One


    "I am here to help restaurants .. create delicious
          meat-free dishes by rethinking ingredients they
                  already have and adding a few new staples."

As a vegetarian living in Austin for twenty years, I've noticed food trends swerve from Spa Cuisine to Heart-Healthy to Steak & Cigars. At the moment, we're enjoying an ironic Neo-Pastoral Period where citizens who can afford to forage at our monumental Whole Foods are also getting grubby in their own garden plots. Restaurant patrons expect to know the lineage of their pork loin and and the scratching practices of their pullets. Yet, despite a ripening Locavore/sustainable food movement and Farmers' Markets in every quarter, it's a challenge to find interesting, vegetable-based food on Austin menus. You'd think the rich harvest would tumble onto the tables of local restaurants but folks seem much more rabid about raw tuna and smoked pork than they are about greens and grains. Austin has even dropped off the Top 10 of PeTA's  Most Veg-Friendly Cities in North America. We could easily swap our Keep Austin Weird slogan for Austin: Better With Bacon.  

Washington DC was named the Most Veg-Friendly and recently, I was contracted to develop new recipes for a permanent meatless section for a supremely popular restaurant there. I've also created alternative hybrid rolls for a sushi diner in Austin but there's a lot of opportunity for progress here, and I'm dying to get to work.

pan-roasted vegetable shepherds' pie in thyme vermouth gravy

Vegetarians are resigned to being underwhelmed when we go out to eat; we've learned to tolerate globs and rubbery chunks of things most people wouldn't ever choose and make do with a handful of dreary dishes.  Many of us just  sacrifice culinary pleasure for reasons that seem more important than personal enjoyment.  Environmental concerns, personal health, and animal welfare are some of the strong motivations to avoid meat, but it's not a surprise more people can't stick to such an austere diet. Hal Herzog, in his book, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals, states that true vegetarians only account for one to three percent of the American population. Well, rather than enraging me as anti-veg propaganda, this information explains a couple of things. Maybe this is why it's so frustrating to find interesting veg food in Austin and perhaps people struggle with a meat-free diet because what's offered to them is so unsatisfying.  It's the old free-range chicken or pasture-raised egg story.

Freebirds Veggie Burrito

Chile Lemongrass Tofu

Most of  the time I get by happily with a glorious, thigh-sized Freebirds custom burrito or a big, zesty bowl of bun at Hai Ky but sometimes, often, I would like dinner, as created by a chef. Someone who scatters Bella Verde microgreens atop caramelized butternut squash, stuffed with local morels, smoked pistachios, dried currants and red quinoa drizzled with a sherried green peppercorn sauce.

Unfortunately, that is rarely possible.

Next, I'll describe the Vegetarian Triumvirate,
the three tiresome selections I encounter when I venture out. After that, I'll talk about why it makes good sense for restaurants to make some pro-veg changes.

Then, I'll talk about who gets it right.