I’m vegetarian. Western food is so focused on meat that people often have no idea how to make a meal that doesn’t contain it. My mother once asked me how to make a vegetarian version of Chicken Parmesan. So keep the tomato sauce, cheese, and spices, but swap out the chicken with pasta. Congrats you’ve made vegetarian Chicken Parmesan. I like to call it Spaghetti.
90% of “vegetarian versions” of dishes are just the dish without meat. 9% of the remainder are the dish with black beans and/or mushrooms
I mean personally I’d sub it in for something with some protein, though you definitely don’t need nearly the amount you get from a piece of meat.
And there’s a lot of alternatives for many different prices. I remember how people used to berate me for being vegetarian while growing up, telling me I’d die and whatnot.
Still here, after nearly thirty years.
That’s because most meat dishes are just vegetarian and vegan dishes with meat added to them.
Those 90% “vegetarian versions” are insulting to vegans because they are not balanced meals. Ya’ll still need protein. A plain salad with no high-protein veg is not a meal. The same salad with croutons made with butter is just insulting ignorance.
I recognize your name and we haven’t seen eye-to-eye in the past, but I’m gonna side with the vegans on this one here. Restaurants need to get their heads out of their asses about what a vegan meal is.
Flip-side. If you have a high-protein vegan meal and you just plop a steak on top of it, that’s also not a well-balanced meal. The term often used is “heavy” (if not just “unbalanced”).