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I wish I could get a list
of Chinese restaurants that truly have vegetarian hot and sour or egg drop. So many make wait staff say "no meat" when there is in fact a chicken broth or something. I know that it is just a misunderstanding, but it leaves me unable to eat at 90% of the Chinese restaurants out there.
Wait staff and vegetarian diets
I rarely ask, since I doubt I can get a credible answer without it risking being awkward for my dining companion. And if I do ask, I limit myself to one clear, specific question, like, "Is that made with chicken broth?" or "Does that have fish oil in it?"
I think the way to solve the problem is for a local vegetarian organization to do an outreach/education, involving the use of native speakers who can explain the issue to the owners.
Couple education with a carrot: if they understand and update their menus and educate their staff, then the organization adds their restaurant to a list of those that get it.
I suppose there could be a logo program, but that would look kinda incongruous on many Asian restaurant menus, and I think a listing is a better carrot.
great idea!
I have thought of a program along the lines of the "kosher" labeling system for vegetarian, vegan, etc. Thankfully, there are a few restaurants in the Boston area who are clued in and those are the ones I frequent. When I'm in NYC, it's ten times easier. It's amazing how much further they are in being veggie friendly, but maybe that's an unfair comparison.
There are a few programs
Run by the various vegetarian societies, but they pretty much are, um, hallelujahing to the choir? They offer their logos or whatever to restaurants that already are savvy in terms of listing ingredients, realizing that fish comes from a dead animal, not putting a dollop of bacon in every dish to render it unvegetarian, etc.
What really would be awesome is a program that goes around to restaurants that aren't already necessarily trying to be veggie-friendly, but are actually doing a good job of doing so.
There's a restaurant guide on one of the Boston veggie sites, I think BVS? It tends to stick to only the places where most/all of the stuff is vegetarian, rather than a variety of places that manage to be super veggie-friendly. Oh, and I'd love to see a site that catalogs places that are ridiculously veggie UNfriendly, like Typhoon in the Back Bay, which is happy to make you anything you want, but is a Thai-ish Amer-Asian place that doesn't have a single vegetarian item on the printed menu. Srsly?
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Inspiring!
I think I'm going to print that out - I work in the financial district and love hot and sour soup.
That said, I was inspired to hoof it over to Brezhnev's (King Fung Garden) today for lunch. The hot and sour was fine indeed.
Gotta agree there.
I've been a huge King Fung fan since I found them. They deliver as well, delicious!
Chinese?
Wow! Pho Pasteur is a Chinese hot pot place. Awesome.
How many Boston bloggers can find Vietnam on a map?
-GM
Hot and Sour soup has always
Hot and Sour soup has always been my litmus test of a Chinese restaurant and I can tell you that not many pass the test. Hopefully i can try one of those.