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.