The Vegetarian Torture

[CallMeIshmael]

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Vegetables are as mainstream as it gets.

Now if they were serving only seaweed or tofu, you've got a point. But if they had a vegetable casserole or something, that's a perfectly good and ordinary meal.

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This part cant be stressed enough.


IF the food was something you would look at, and be 99% sure that the server was a vegetarian, then they probably should mention it beforehand. (Just because most of those meals tend not to be appealing to a large percentage of the population)

However, if it was just a normal looking meal that happened to be devoid of meat, they didnt need to mention anything.

[Evan]

Man, this thread brought out some interesting opinions.

I don't understand anyone thinking that vegetarian diets are not an exception to the norm. I agree with whoever said that a warning would be polite for an "alternative" meal, as this seems to have been. Obviously not serving meat is fine (pasta, pizza, whatever, as other people have mentioned). However there needs to be some common sense, I think we can all agree that ground seaweed and avocado puree and a tofu and radish soup (just made that all up) would not fall under the realm of "normal" foods and pretty much everyone would like to know if that's what they're going to end up eating; not because there's no meat but because it's some pretty weird food.

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Your vegetarian friends undoubtedly would have the good sense to inform their prospective hosts of their dieteary choice. You might consider doing the same when invited to anything but a cook-out:

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I think it's pretty silly to expet someone to disclose that they eat meat. I would feel really dumb saying anything like that to someone.

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To the OP: have you invited them over for dinner recently and served them flesh? It might have been payback

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Eliane, I would almost always assume I know the answer to this question, but you often surprise me....if someone invited you to dinner and served something like beef carpaccio, bacon-srapped scallops and lamb chops, would you consider that rude? Note that you never told these people you were a vegetarian, let's just say it's someone you work with. Maybe your coworker has seen you eat seaweed and pine nuts for lunch every day but just assumed you ate meat also. Rude or not rude?

[gumpzilla]

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Eliane, I would almost always assume I know the answer to this question, but you often surprise me....if someone invited you to dinner and served something like beef carpaccio, bacon-srapped scallops and lamb chops, would you consider that rude? Note that you never told these people you were a vegetarian, let's just say it's someone you work with. Maybe your coworker has seen you eat seaweed and pine nuts for lunch every day but just assumed you ate meat also. Rude or not rude?

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I think that were I to invite somebody over for dinner at my place, I would usually explicitly ask ahead of time whether or not they had any dietary restrictions just to avoid this kind of thing. I'm not sure it's rude to fail to do this, but especially since vegetarianism isn't particularly rare it seems like a prudent thing to do. I also think that if I were a vegetarian, I would give people a heads-up about that before having them over for dinner, too.

[Blarg]

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I think it's pretty silly to expet someone to disclose that they eat meat. I would feel really dumb saying anything like that to someone.


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I think the guy is pointing out that being inflexible is the problem, and you can take steps to deal with it.

Inflexible vegetarians can let their hosts know that, no offense, no matter how well they cook the meat, it won't be eaten, and their guests will still be hungry. And if someone finds anything but meat makes him recoil and want to vomit, he might want to consider that he could be a difficult guest to please, maybe even a pretty unpleasant and insulting one, so perhaps he should make some sort of allowances. I guess that could even include eating a bit before he came, if he expected he would be served a purely vegetarian meal.

Basically, if you're the one imposing your lack of flexibility on the event, it's up to you to do what you can to make sure no one is offended and that things work out. Most hosts would probably be happy to at least try to accommodate you unless your needs are especially difficult to deal with.

However, if you're dealing with someone who is a vegetarian for moral or religious reasons, not just for health or as a matter of taste, it would be unfair to expect your hosts to violate their religion or morals to get you some dead animal to eat in their house.

the burden of figuring out how to make dinners work out lies at least as much with him as with his hosts.

[ElaineMonster]

Evan,
Everyone knows I'm a vegetarian. I make it abundantly clear. Anyone who is surprised by that fact simply hasn't been paying attention.

So, yeah, it would be rude of them to invite me over and serve me dead animal.

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But I know what you're point is, and that's why I ALWAYS tell people when I invite them over what to expect. Some pay attention and others are surprised. The ones who are surprised get surprised by anything that's the slightest bit unusual (for them).

I'm just guessing that the OP just wasn't listening the 35 times his hosts informed him they were vegetarian.

I'm guessing the OP would be the guy who'd object to taking his shoes off when entering Japanese households. He's say they should have told him beforehand to wear clean socks.

But I don't know. Maybe he's a really considerate guy who just pretends to be a dick online.

[Blarg]

That seems fair and practical. The host wouldn't want his guests not to enjoy their meal, but he needs a heads up if someone has special needs. If I were a vegetarian, I'd definitely tell someone, if only so I wasn't forced to make a vegetarian "meal" out of an extra potato or some extra bread and butter or something while avoiding the main dish.

[Jack of Arcades]

I think it's weird that nowhere in the exchange of "would you like to come over for dinner" and "sure, I'd love to" was just exactly was being served. Maybe I'm weird, but I would always inform or ask.

[Blarg]

I would never ask. That seems rude.

What are you gonna do, turn down the invite based on what you hear?

Maybe the guy/girl hasn't even decided what to make yet when inviting you.

If I were the host, though, I would definitely ask the guest if he liked something I was making that a lot of people don't like -- like many people just don't like fish or shellfish.

[CallMeIshmael]

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But I don't know. Maybe he's a really considerate guy who just pretends to be a dick online.

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Nah, he's a really nice guy online

[miajag]

Isn't the OP more about the food being disgusting than it being vegetarian? I do think it is rather rude for the host couple to serve strange, unusual food without prior notice, regardless of whether it has meat in it or not.