I have no problem with the former group, those are usually just things that taste great. For the second group, it’s often something where the original tastes great but they ruined it by taking out the meat. I avoid those.
If something is labeled as vegan or vegetarian I’m going to assume it’s in the second group.
You might want to reconsider. East and South-East Asia have been developing and using meat substitutes for at least several decades, if not centuries: they are based on soya, konjac, flour, mushroom fibres, etc, and they taste phenomenal. They may not precisely resemble the meat that they look like (there's mock mutton, mock shrimp, mock chicken, mock sausages, mock ham, mock duck, mock pork ribs, mock pretty much anything), but the texture, aroma, and taste are superb, and they work well both stir-fried, or as proteins in stews/gravies/curries.
I think the Western effort to imitate meat is less likely to be successful than the already-existing Asian mock-meats industry: in the West, it seems people want their imitations to look exactly like meat, with all the blood and fat and everything, which is going to be significantly more expensive and taste a lot worse than something that merely resembles meat visually and letting the taste and texture be different.
Consider the options here[1], for instance.
But I'm also curious to ask: what would you assume about a vegan restaurant?
My expectation from most restaurants serving vegan food is that they are just trying to have something so that vegan people technically can eat there but not necessarily that they will enjoy it.
It’s not always true. It’s a safe guideline though. I’d say 4/5 cases it’s fair to expect the vegan menu option to be mediocre at best.
This varies by locale too, though. It’s a little easier to find okay options in places with more vegan restaurants in general.
I'm not sure why my comment above deserved all the downvotes though, I was only sharing my own experience and asking a question.
My default opinion of "vegan" items in menus of non-vegan restaurants is that they seem suspicious and are best avoided (I'm not talking about salads, of course). I tend to assume they are second rate meals put in the menu as an option for vegans who are there to dine with non-vegan friends.
I have been proven wrong on occasion, as some restaurants do offer decent options for vegans without specializing in it, but as a default intuition it seems more often right than wrong.
Vegan restaurants on the contrary can be quite good (again, with exceptions: just as there are bad steak houses or Italian restaurants, so there are bad vegan restaurants!). You just know the vegan items aren't an afterthought because every item is vegan.
A typical vegan dish when I see it presented at a restaurant or conference is usually one that is primarily based on beans, chickpeas, lentils, and Couscous, usually with minimal spices. On the side there is usually several dips, often variations of Hummus.
There are exceptions. If I see a vegan dish in a Thai restaurant I would assume a different taste and culture, hopefully one based primarily on seaweed and mushrooms.
That's what your taste buds say but if your immune system ever decides to weigh in on this you might find yourself rethinking the matter.
Yeah no shit … reminds me of ye olde xkcd about asbestos-free cereal: https://xkcd.com/641/
It just seems instead of eating baked goods that taste like sandpaper people should be eating rice or quinoa or corn or teff or millet. Some people just can't seem to get past sandwiches and pastries but if you get past that there is a lot of great stuff to eat that is naturally gluten free... But no, they have to have a gluten free BLT or a gluten free donut.
Anecdotally I knew two people with the disease and can see it's frustrating to live with. One person told me how pepper the cheap stuff in restaurants or grocery stores has wheat dust in it to help it flow. A co-worker told me of the frustration his sister had in restaurants with trendy "oh it's gluten free" but it wasn't so off to the hospital she went. He said she was more mad at how everything is labelled as gluten free now but there's no way to really know since it's mainly just a cash grab.
Studies are finding that gluten tolerance isn't binary. There are many people who don't have celiac and can in principle eat gluten safely, but still find digesting gluten an uncomfortable experience due to how it reacts with their gut.
https://traditionalplantbasedcooking.com/vintage-chocolate-v...
which was one of the best tasting snacks there is, but as they went upscale it became larger and more expensive and more elaborate.
It reminds me of the Sandtaler which was a simple shortbread cookie (not vegan!) in the bakeries of Dresden in 1999, if I travelled in West Germany I would find cookies that were complications of the Sandtaler such as two Sandtalers stuck together with chocolate, but the simple cookie was too cheap for richer parts of Germany.
Sure and this is ok. The same with the salad, right? And the mineral water on the drinks list.
Like you, I support the genuinely necessary efforts for providing good access to alternatives to animal protein.
Edit :
I think the replies are misunderstanding. I'm saying, the vegan food is not for you. It's for vegans, like the salad is for those eating light. Like the mineral water is for those who don't want an alcoholic drink. Why do you care how it tastes? Please, can we keep it on the menu.
I've been 3 decades advocating and celebrating more diversity in menus and it would be devastating to see losses from what has been achieved.
Next step what so many are asking here: make it taste good
I think the issue is that people don’t interpret the ‘vegetarian’ label on the menu as “this is OK for vegetarians to eat”, they interpret it as “we altered this dish to make it suitable for vegetarians”, and usually the latter means it’s not very good.
Salad is not at all like an animal-based meal having its animal component replaced with something else.
Likewise, mineral water is there because some people like drinking water and not alcohol or soda.