What's a vegetarian?
A person who doesn't eat meat and animal products such as milk, egg or honey.
There are many different types of vegetarians, such as Strict Vegetarian (No meat and Animal Products), Semi-Vegetarian (Occasionally eats poultry and fish) and Lacto-vegetarian (no meat but eats dairy products except egg), lastly, due to religion, there are some other items that this group of people doesn't eat.
You must be thinking, why am I explaining this? It can be googled easily but there are people who doesn't understand this.
I'm working in a normal restaurant, serving meat, seafood, dairy products, and etc... Once a while, I'll have some vegetarian customers walking in looking for vegetarian food. Something's it is a bit frustrating, trying to explain to customers why we have limited vegetarian dishes in our menu.
It's not that we don't welcome vegans in a restaurant, but it seems like it is very difficult for a vegan to understand why a regular restaurant are not able to provide full vegetarian meals.
1st of all, please understand that there ARE vegetarian restaurants catered to vegetarians. These restaurants know the basic needs of what a vegetarian eat or do not eat. Vegetarian food is not easy to prepare. It is not just puting all the ingredients together, seasoning plays a part too. Do you know that some seasoning contains meat extracts? A vegetarian restaurant will use pure vegetarian ingredients and seasonings for their food.
2ndly, if you are bringing an important vegetarian guest for dinner, please respect the guest and bring him/her to a restaurant that they can dine in. Bringing them to a non-vegetarian restaurant is simply not respecting them. Sometimes I'll see the vegetarian guest eating only green salad, grill vegetables with salt and pepper, while the other is having 大鱼大肉. When dining in a regular restaurant, vegetables are just the sides next to the meat. Please do not blame the restaurant for not being able to prepare food for the vegetarian.
Another thing to take note is some vegetarian due to religion, are unable to accept their food being cooked in the pot/griller that had been used for cooking meat items, or plates that had been used to serve meat dishes. Going to a vegetarian restaurant will be the best choice then.
If you are not sure whether the restaurant can prepare vegetarian dishes, call up before hand and check. Do not take it for granted and then scolding the heads off the waitress...
Confessions of a Waitress
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