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Comment by mikepurvis | Hacker News Reader

I often choose the vegetarian option when eating out simply because I know how to grill a steak or roast some chicken at home— I can make those meals just as well as they can, and for half the cost or less.

When I see multiple vegetarian meal options, that's a signal that the chef isn't just doing a low effort protein swap-out but is actually offering something tasty and interesting, and I'm interested to try it.

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Huh. I do the opposite—I order meat out (not always, but sometimes) and rarely cook it at home. I can and every now and then do make good dishes with meat, but find it fussy, messy, and very expensive if you screw it up. Plus I have trouble with the leftovers (leftover chicken almost always has a really, really bad flavor to me, for example).

Veggies have their own PITA issues, of course. I just prefer to put up with those rather than those and meat's issues, in my home kitchen & pantry.

[EDIT] another factor's that I don't really care for most cheap meats. Ground beef? Eh, no. Shredded chicken from a can? God no. Cheap fish available this far from the ocean? I'll pass. Carne asada (expensive these days), a great steak, good sushi? Hell yes. But I'll leave it to the pros so I don't wreck an expensive piece of meat, no more often than I get that particular craving.

That's fair. I'm mostly cooking on the weekends, for a family of five, so doing something like a 4lb roast chicken with potatoes and veggies is a pretty economical and straightforward meal. Everyone gets their fill, but there's enough left for at least one lunch portion or maybe even a second dinner like chicken Caesar wraps.

> When I see multiple vegetarian meal options, that's a signal that [...]

I use whether it's called something like 'vegetarian <blah>' (as a signal for the reverse).

I don't want a 'vegetarian lasagne', or 'vegetarian burger'.

A slightly different but similarly ridiculous one is 'vegetarian chili con carne', which means 'vegetarian chili with meat'.

We just call that chili sin carne. I gave it to my non-vegan family and they couldn't tell the difference. It's a really great dish, quick to make (faster and easier than with meat), healthy, high in protein and tasty.

I really don't get what the issue is here? There are also great bean/nut/mushroom burgers, that don't intend to taste like meat burgers.

Why can't vegan dishes use the same form factor as non-veg dishes? Does everything just have to be a bland plate of veggies for us?

I can't speak for the parent, but my feeling about it is that I don't like food pretending to be other food. So yes, serve me up a mushroom burger or a falafel burger, or a winter black bean and kale burger. But if the menu says simply "veggie burger" then there's a pretty good sign that it's an imitation and not made from whole food.

Now, none of this is implying that the veggie meal should be a "bland plate of veggies", rather it's that there are whole cuisines out there with delicious plant-based meals that have stood the test of time. If I'm eating vegetarian, I want one of those meals, not a meat meal with the meat swapped out.

I don't have a problem with the form of food itself, it's just that 'vegetarian burger' tells me only what it isn't, it could be (almost) anything!

I wouldn't buy a 'vegeterian <thing>' for the same reason I wouldn't buy a 'meat <thing>' - it just sounds crap and like you don't know what you've made you just knew you needed a vegetarian (resp. meat) option.

Yeah, that's the difference I don't think they really looked at. if the quality of the vegetarian food is better than the meat offerings, that would definitely help drive sales.

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