"Tapas" (tapas)
09/25/2018 at 10:21 • Filed to: None
0
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"Tapas" (tapas)
09/25/2018 at 10:21 • Filed to: None | 0
| 24 |
So, one of my relatives is visiting me in Canada and I want to introduce them to new cuisines.
Edit:
Sorry I should have mentioned this from the get go - me and my family are Indian and Indian food i s something we both love and are familiar with . I was hoping for suggestions from other cuisines.
I understand that most restaurants have veggie options. But the challenge is finding veggie food that is actually cooked well and flavorful.
Sort of like going to a burger joint and settling for a bean burger, or going to a Thai place and getting Pad thai. (Although there are some genuinely good bean patties, most have been meh in my experience. With Pad Thai, I wouldn’t feel like I’m “settling” for something because I don’t eat meat.)
Problem is, most things I love are meat and meat based, but they’re vegetarian.
Are there any cuisines that have good vegetarian dishes worth trying.
I know Indian and Middle Eastern food has a lot of choices. Please help me with a veg dish and cuisine that you like below.
Nibby
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 09:29 |
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if they like indian food, dosas are a safe bet
Azrek
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 09:32 |
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It depends if you are cooking or going out. Most places now have a Veggie meal or even a Vegan friendly menu.
Lately I’ve been using Beyond Meat paddies I’ve found at Publix. This is one of those new style of plant based proteins that actually looks and tastes like meat, but is Soy free and totally plant. You can get chicken and beef styles and it is actually...decent. I eat them all the time as you can grill or fry with them. I make tacos and burgers. I have had issues seasoning the burgers as it doesn’t seem to take as well as actual beef.
I am trying to get more plant protein over red meat in my diet and this has been excellent.
KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 09:34 |
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Most Asian restaurants will have a Vegetarian menu and specifically East Asian (Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese) can substitute any meat for Tofu. Just make sure what broth/sauce they use and ask them to substitute it as well.
Italian restaurants can also customize any pasta or baked dish.
Sandwich places and Pizza obviously- everything can be made veggie.
I am seeing even a lot of traditional American (Canadian) burger joints also have a Black bean patty option.
TorqueToYield
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 09:38 |
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falafel, Korean (bibimbap, ba ncha n, etc), Pizza & Italian in general, traditional Chinese - like hand pulled noodles with fried tofu, Thai also has lots of salads and noodle dishes with tofu or seafood if they’re p escatarian .
punkgoose17
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 10:01 |
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Indian somosas (fried dough with mashed potatoes and peas inside), I really like vegetarian Indian food. Pizza and pastas are really easy to do good vegetarian.
I am going to try and follow this post to get some ideas for myself as well.
DipodomysDeserti
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 10:09 |
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Here’s a really good dish I made a few weeks ago. Ethiopean red lentil stew. Red lentils, veggie stock, onion, whatever other veggies you want to throw in there, berbere spice. Served on a bed of white rice. My wife is a vegetarian, so I cook a lot of veggie meals. Thai and Indian food are always good choices , but this one offers a bit different flavors. Whatever you do don’t go the fake mest route. Most vegetarians stop eating that stuff after their first year or so.
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Tapas
> DipodomysDeserti
09/25/2018 at 10:12 |
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Ooo Ehti opian. I will look for a place we can go to and look up this recipe for myself later!
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Tapas
> TorqueToYield
09/25/2018 at 10:12 |
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Korean - Something else I need to look into!
nermal
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 10:21 |
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Make some elotes (aka Mexican Street Corn).
For best results, don’t boil the corn. Cook it on a charcoal grill. You don’t need to do anything besides peeling the corn and putting it on the grate, then flipping a few times. It will add that delicious smokey charcoal taste that makes everything better.
WilliamsSW
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 10:34 |
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A lot of good suggestions here - Italian, Middle Eastern, Ethiopian.
For Chinese, I would check ingredients with the restaurant closely - especially if they don’t eat fish/shellfish. My wife, who is Chinese, always claims that Chinese cuisine is one of the hardest to eat as a vegetarian. Of course, China is a huge country with varied cuisine , so that really depends on what part of China you’re talking about.
I would also look for restaurants that celebrate their vegetarian options, rather than relegating them to the back burner with meh soy burgers.
Vegetarian food can be fantastic, with some effort, so find the places that make that effort - of course, if you’re Indian, you already know this...
Textured Soy Protein
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 10:39 |
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OH DAMN YO, TIME FOR A SHAMELESS PLUG OF MY VEGAN INSTAGRAM !
Looking for a place to eat is very much an exercise in poring over menus to see how many options I might have. Me, I’m perfectly content to eat in my little hole-in-the-wall mom ‘n pop type places from various cultures, but my wife likes to go to places with ambiance and nice lighting, and decorations.
Generally speaking I have good luck with the various Asian countries’ restaurants, as all of them for the most part have lots of veggie stuff, or tofu instead of meat .
Chinese is usually the most variety, especially if you look at places that have authentic Chinese menu and not the westernized version. Like my favorite place, Bob’s Shanghai 66.
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Thai can often have a bunch of options (and don’t get the damn pad thai, there’s way better stuff like all the curries and noodles and whatnot). Vietnamese and Japanese usually varies as it’s pretty meat-focused but most good pho and ramen places will have a veggie option. Make sure the broth is veggie and it’s not just the stuff they put in the broth that’s veggie.
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Ethiopian is very veg-friendly, but at least to me as an outsider of both cultures, there’s a lot of similarity to Indian food with the curries and lentils . There’s a ton of Ethiopians here in DC and I often see Indian families when I go to Ethiopian restaurants.
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If your relatives eat dairy then they’ll be fine at an Italian place, but since I don’t, I struggle with that. There is a place here in DC with a vegan section of their menu.
Tapas can be good depending on the place. A lot of the non-meat items tend to have cheese in them but there’s a good one around me that has a bunch of stuff.
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Look for places that serve the Beyond Burger or the Impossible Burger, those are both much better than the usual sad frozen black bean patty.
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If you’re still trying to think of ideas, go on Yelp and Google Maps and search for vegetarian or vegan in your area. Usually a good amount of stuff will show up.
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Tapas
> WilliamsSW
09/25/2018 at 10:51 |
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Exactly this.
I’ll check out restaurants that advertise their vegetariannness( ?)
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Tapas
> Textured Soy Protein
09/25/2018 at 10:56 |
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I agree. I want to avoid having to spend a 45 minutes trying to find decent veg places on the phone, especially when we’re out and hungry. So I’m gonna do some homework right now.
Although we both love hole-in-the-walls, I haven’t found any that have good veg options.
Also, Ethiopian is very similar to Indian.
Italian is popular but not exotic anymore. Still a solid option.
I love pho and ramen. I will have to do some extra digging to find places with veg broths though. But its worth it.
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Textured Soy Protein
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 11:15 |
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Yeah, best to do the menu scouting ahead of time so you can tell them their options.
The only times I’ve gotten into sticky situations eating with omnivore friends & family is when my wife gets hung up on going somewhere to accommodate our dining partners, and she has some specific experience in mind that she wants to provide.
L ike her sister visited us from Wisconsin, and she was all hung up on this idea that we HAD to take them to a good seafood place on the river, even though both my wife and I are vegan , meanwhile I’m like, uhh WTF are we supposed to eat? And she’ll be like I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE FOOD, LET’S JUST BE FLEXIBLE! Then we go to all this hassle riding the metro down to the waterfront with them, even though it’s a rainy day and they probably didn’t care to make the schlep, and my wife and I are trying to cobble together a meal of random- ass side dishes just so this experience could be provided to her sister, and we damn near almost ordered oysters and other seafood out of desperation before I talked myself and her out of it. It was uncomfortable. Extremely.
It took a while after that for me to convince her that it’s fine to be flexible to a point but we need to not put ourselves in situations where there will be so few options for us that we’ll be tempted to stray.
Anyway, that was a long diversion, but point is, if they’re anything like me, I’m sure your relative will be happy to go wherever with you as long as they have at least a couple choices of actual meals and not piecing together random non-entree items into enough food.
Another one I meant to include is Russian, if there are any places near you. Especially if they have stuff from the more central Asia parts of Russia or former Soviet countries like Uzbekistan etc.
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WilliamsSW
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 11:15 |
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I was just thinking about your comment on veggie burgers - and yeah, most of them are bleah, but I was specifically thinking of a place in Chicago in my old neighborhood. It was a nice little bistro, basically - but they had a crazy delicious veggie burger that they made in-house. I used to go there sometimes just to order that burger, and I’m not a vegetarian.
They had a couple of other veggie options, too - all of which they put effort into. It was a little neighborhood bistro (French influence, but they had other influences too) , and I went there a few times with vegetarians, and they came away happy!
If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 11:26 |
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I have a Ratatouille recipe that will give you a mouth orgasm but it takes 5 hours to make. I'll type it up if you're interested.
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Tapas
> WilliamsSW
09/25/2018 at 11:33 |
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Yea, when the veggie burgers are good; they’re absolutely amazing.
Otherwise they’re eh. No middle ground lol.
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Tapas
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
09/25/2018 at 11:35 |
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Gib pls!
I eat meat dishes equally as many times as veg dishes.
I will make it for me (because we are going to be out and about for her whole trip).
SPAMBot - Horse Doctor
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 12:26 |
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Mediterranean places are usually really good. I have a place by my gym that has a ton of option and dishes I can choose from.
I personally stray away from Chinese / Thai because I’ve never been confident they aren’t using an animal/fish based broth or shrimp paste found in many Thai dishes. Your mileage may vary, though.
As others have said, Italian is easy but a little uninspired if you don’t have a really good restaurant. I would only feed them a veggie burger once as it gets really old, really fast when your friends tell you, “oh, this place has a veggie burger!”.
I don’t know how the Mexican food is in your area (probably not as good as SoCal) but many Mexican dishes can be made veggie. Just look out for beef/chicken broth in some of the sauces and the rice. Also, most refried beans use lard so I generally order white rice and black beans.
Also, most modern, ethnic neutral, restaurants have a pretty good veggie option that is unique.
I also really like going for sushi. I do not eat fish but many of the places in my area make really good veggie rolls. Look at a few menus and see if they a few specialty rolls that are not the generic avocado or cucumber roll.
ThePlasticOne - no diggities expressed nor implied.
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 12:36 |
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Chinese/Vietnamese vegan is kind of a thing now. Buddhist “duck” made from tofu skin is so good it’s considered a delicacy even amongst meat eaters.
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Tapas
> ThePlasticOne - no diggities expressed nor implied.
09/25/2018 at 13:05 |
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This is the first time I’m hearing about it. I’ll have to look into that!
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If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
> Tapas
09/25/2018 at 14:11 |
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1 skinny eggplant
1 yellow squash
1 zucchini
3 firm Plum tomatoes (easier to slice if not fully ripe)
1 each red, orange and yellow pepper
Mirepoix mix (2 white onion, 4 carrots, 5 sticks celery, diced)
Start roasting the peppers in the oven (brush with olive oil and bake @ 400F for 30-40 mins, flipping halfway through). While they are roasting, saute up the mirepoix mix with butter until everything is soft. Combine roasted peppers, mirepoix mix, and one 15oz can tomato sauce in blender and blend. I like to leave it a bit chunky. For a bit of kick you can also roast a hot pepper and include it.
Spread the sauce in a Dutch oven or any sort of wide bakable dish with straight walls. If you want to make this a meat dish, fry up 1lb ground sausage and mix with the sauce. Slice up the squash, zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes and arrange in alternating pattern on top of the sauce.
Drizzle with a mixture of olive oil, garlic, and thyme. Bake covered @ 300F for 3 hours, then uncover and bake @ 350F for another 40 minutes. Serve with rice.
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If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
09/25/2018 at 14:16 |
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(the pictures provided are sans plum tomatoes)
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Tapas
> If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
09/25/2018 at 14:18 |
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THANK YOU!
