LIFE & TIMES JUSTICE FOR VEGGIES

EDITED BY KATHY CLUGSTON

This month, Kathy discusses her frustration at the small portion sizes of veggie dishes on offer at cafés and restaurants.

I am no good at complaining. At least not in person. Ask me if I’m happy with a meal or service I am about to pay a decent sum for and despite all evidence to the contrary - the barely touched plate of undercooked food, the wonky fringe, the streaky paint - “YES!” I’ll exclaim, “Lovely! Thank you SO much!” I honestly don’t know what my subconscious thinks would happen if I simply and politely expressed my dissatisfaction, but it just won’t let me. Email is different, though. In putting virtual pen to paper I find myself more articulate and less embarrassed. I did it recently after an evening a quite a fancy fancy restaurant. While my companion feasted on a huge portion of steak, potatoes and veg, I, for about the same price, was served a vegetarian dish of 4 tiny ravioli with a smear of tomato sauce and a few green leaves. “It wouldn’t have filled your tooth”, as our friend Hazel would say. Stomach rumbling, I smiled and thanked and tipped, knowing I’d have to stop off for a curried chip on the way home and composing the email I would later send to the manager with photographic evidence of our disproportionate portions. It is often the plight of the non-meat-eater to be underfed. I’ve been vegetarian for most of my adult life. I can’t remember the exact moment I renounced meat but the BSE crisis in the 1990s was definitely a factor as was somebody explaining to me, in detail, how sausages are made. Becoming veggie was a slightly left-field thing to do back then, often provoking amazement and/or pity, as in the TV sitcom The Royle Family when Nana is introduced to Anthony’s new vegetarian girlfriend and exclaims: “Oh Emma, what a shame for you! Can she have some wafer-thin ham, Barbara?” The best you could hope to find in a restaurant back then was a margherita pizza or cheese omelette, and if you went on holiday to somewhere like France or Spain, the “vegetarian” dishes contained at best fish, at worst lumps of chicken or bacon. And if you were vegan, well, good luck.

But it’s a whole new meat-free ball game now. Plant-based is the new jam. Although only a small minority of us are fully vegetarian or vegan - an estimated 3% of the UK population, 4% in Ireland - look more closely and you’ll see that among the under 20s, that figure is much higher - around 11% in the UK and rising, with concerns about the environment often cited as the main factor. Nearly 15% of UK adults consider themselves ‘flexitarian’ - that is, mainly vegetarian with the occasional bit of meat or fish. When all the major supermarkets start producing meat-free ranges, you know it’s more than a short-lived fad.

So what’s my point? Well, it’s more of a plea really to the restaurants, cafés and caterers of Northern Ireland to lavish the increasing number of us who want to eat no or less meat with the same love and attention as you do carnivores. Things have improved and many places now cater brilliantly for a range of dietary needs and preferences, but I am still astonished by the number of restaurants that still have only one vegetarian option. Some don’t even have the decency to make the only soup they serve vegan, which is such an easy thing to do. These places are missing a trick. They’re not just catering for a small