As a chef with many, many years experience both in the kitchen and
with various sects of vegetarians, I have a few observations. If
you are a vegetarian and you come into my dining room, and ask for
a meal made solely of vegetable products, I am more than happy to
do anything reasonable to comply. The operative word here is
reasonable--among the reasons thatI do what I do for a living is
that I like making people happy. I don't do it so that I can be put
through hoops, as vegans eating in my dining room have often
assumed they have a right to do. By the way, anyone who would try
to sneak animal product into a vegatarian meal is mentally ill--if
you don't want to do it, say so.
I put a great deal of effort into writing a menu. Why would anyone
come to a restaurant that does that and then ask them to do
something else? Something they obviously don't specialize in. I
have always wondered what the reaction would be if I went into a
vegan restaurant and asked for a piece of meat.
If vegans want to eat as vegans, I am all for it. It would strike
me as inconsistent, however, if they drove cars, ate vegetables
grown in large factory farms, wore clothes made with natural fibers
that required pesticides(good bye linen and cotton. Silk too since
they kill the larvae.) Lived in a house made of wood since it
destroys habitat--you can see where I'm going. If the answer is
that this is just a gestural effort--make your gesture somewhere
else.
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