Ended up going to La Chapelle. The guys were helpful on the phone and said if there was nothing on the menu the veggie people liked, to give them a list of ingredients or things they would like and the chef would prepare them!

Lovely place, old cathedral/school/gym. The sommelier/waiter seemed to know the courses very well, and recommended some good wines to accompany the meal.

No complaints about the meals and the vegetable-atarians loved their food. Cost came to £55 per head including drinks.

There isn't a plate of vegetables on this planet worth £50.

Yes but most of that was probably booze.

Booze came to £15 per head including predinner drinks. Veggie stuff was risotto, which was nice, and gnocchi which I didn't get to taste.

If Steak houses have to serve a vegi option, I still thing specialist vegi restaurants should have to serve a meat course.

(Not that that has anything to do with this thread, I just wanted to rant.)

I agree with the principle but it would be logistically hard for them. If you think about it, non-vegetarian restaurants are preparing and serving vegetables anyway, so they have the equipment and such which are used every day. A veggie restaurant with a 'meat option' would have to have all the equipment for that (separate fridges, preparation areas etc) due to food preparation regulations which would only get used very rarely. Let's be honest, who would actually into a veggie restaurant and order a dish with meat in it anyway? It would probably be just as underwhelming as the veggie option in most 'generic' restaurants is.

The short line is : non-veggies can still eat vegetables, so the situations aren't entirely a mirror of each other. And a good veggie restaurant's food is still good, regardless of what sort of ingredients are in it.

Jon

That would mean there was no such thing as a vegi restaurant. The smell of steak grilling makes me physically sick, so I really wouldn't want to have to suffer that when I'm eating.

I went to a really nice one off the Brompton Road last year. I think it was about £15 a head including a beer, but that was just lunch. Can't remember what it was called though, so that's not much help to anyone

Quite right. I want to eat an Italian meal when I go to the local Chinese takeaway, and don't see why I can't buy steak from the fishmongers! [/sarcasm]

Steak houses don't HAVE to provide veggie options but they'd lose more customers if they didn't. Also, think about how well prepared a meat meal would be from a vegetarian restaurant would be! With veggie friends, we go to places that have a few veggie meals on the menu. If it's very poor (eg just one dish), then we don't go there. That restaurant has just missed out on £££. When even Gordon Ramsay (who despises vegetarians) has a vegetarian tasting menu, you know it's worth having a veggie menu.

Also as above, a lot of people eat at veggie/vegan restaurants for a particular reason (meat-free), so things would have to be duplicated. A bit like nut and nut-free factories (can't recall who does this).

The best solution IMO is one of those replicator jobbies. You could eat whatever you wanted.