I don't really know the places that she likes. She usually picks somewhere different each year, someplace new that she wants to try.
She's also seriously overestimating how difficult it is to get vegan food. Just about everywhere, if there's not something actually vegan on the menu, then there's something where I can say "I'll have this, without the cheese" or whatever, and at pretty much all restaurants other than fast food, if there's actually nothing on the menu, I can ask the waiter, who will usually say "Oh, yeah, the chef has this dish he makes when vegans come in, it's not on the menu," or the waiter will talk to the chef and I'll get some pasta or something. I know that I'm not going to get something I love at every meal. I'm willing to have a plate of pasta with tomato sauce, or a big salad, or something like that. My mom just doesn't seem willing to watch me eat that.
Welcome to the world Kalliope! Congratulations again, Sparky!
Bleh. I'm feeling the beginnings of a panic attack. I thought I'd gotten these under control.
Kalliope is such a pretty name. Yay for Sparky and family of Sparky!
Welcome Kalliope!
Hil, doesn't pasta usually have eggs? Or is that just the kind with egg in the name?
Generally, fresh pasta has eggs, dried pasta does not.
Most commercially made pasta is egg-free (but comes with a "THE MACHINE NEXT TO THE ONE MAKING THE STUFF IN HERE MAY HAVE HAD SOME EGGS OR NUTS ON IT" warning on the box for allergic peeps).
So a high-end Italian restaurant is probably not serving vegan pasta, but spaghetti almost anywhere else should be okay.
So a high-end Italian restaurant is probably not serving vegan pasta, but spaghetti almost anywhere else should be okay.
Except for Olive Garden. Someone I know went through their menu and concluded that there was not a single vegan item, or even much that could be made vegan (like, say, at some similar places, getting an individual pizza with a bunch of veggies and no cheese works.) They even wrote to the Olive Garden management, asking if there was anything vegan, and if not, if they could consider adding something vegan to the menu, since there are lots of families that have a vegan member and would like to go to a family restaurant like Olive Garden but can't because there's nothing for that one family member to eat, and got a response that was basically, "No. We know our customers, and we're not changing anything."
(Emailing restaurant chains like that can actually work. I know a bunch of people who've tried it at other chains and gotten responses like, "We've heard from several of our customers about this issue, and we are now working on adding new items to our menu." Or, at the very least, a good PR person can throw together a "Thank you for your suggestion" response. I can't remember the exact wording of the Olive Garden response, but, for something coming from a customer services person, it was really rude.)
