Are Good Vegetarian Dishes So Hard?

How many times have you been to a restaurant purportedly serving modern cuisine, charging around $30 a main, yet with only a token, unappetising vegetarian dish on the menu, if that?

I’m not vegetarian, so it doesn’t affect me directly. However, I often eat out with vegetarians. This limits the choice of venue.

A competent chef should be able to produce two or three interesting vegetarian dishes for both the entrée and main course. It’s not hard.

Here’s an example of the menu which prompted this post. It’s Yulli’s in Surry Hills, Sydney.

Yulli’s is entirely vegetarian. There are at least half a dozen dishes which I would happily eat. My companions, two vegetarians among them, felt the same.

My point is that these dishes are not hard to make. At worst, just look at the menu and copy them.

Any chef who does not grasp that a significant proportion of the population is vegetarian and cannot cater accordingly lacks credibility.

Obviously, if it's a specialty restaurant like a steak house, why would you bother? However, for a restaurant allegedly serving "modern" cuisine, there is really no excuse.