Vegetarian Rage

As a vegetarian whose family is not, I often find myself at restaurants that don’t necessarily cater to vegetarians.  When we eat out we tend to go to family friendly chain restaurants.  I am talking about the “sit down” places that have a 17 year old hostess and a kids menu that comes with crayons.

As I flip thorough the menu it is hard to spot vegetarian dishes.  Some times a dish may look vegetarian, but turns out that it is not (more on that in future rage columns).  Even if I spot one or two dishes that could be vegetarian, I will generally ask the waiter or waitress if they can suggest some items for vegetarians.  Nothing makes me want to *snap* more than when I inevitably hear the words “We have salad”.

I wonder if it is a stereotype of vegetarians that everyone assumes that all we eat is salad?  I am 6 foot 2 inches tall and weigh over 200 pounds (or about 90 kilos for the metric based readers).  A salad usually does not cut it for me.  And I don’t know if the wait staff has looked at their menu, but most of the salads come with bacon, chicken, taco meat or dressing that contains animal products.  So even if it is a salad, it does not necessarily mean that it is a vegetarian dish.

I understand that the wait staff does not make the menu, especially at a chain restaurant.   It would be nice for them to be aware of the dishes that are vegetarian on the menu or could be prepared as vegetarian.  Also sometimes the kitchen can prepare special dishes for vegetarians that are not on the menu.  As a real bonus, they could ask the customer if they are a vegetarian or a vegan before they just start blindly suggesting items from the menu.