Menu mayhem: it’s time the food world stopped discriminating

To read the headlines is to believe we are divided by class, politics, gender, race and religion. In the food world, it’s even more divisive. Take the case of the vegetarian versus the meat-eater. More people eat meat than choose not to eat meat. Therefore, there are more meat dishes than meat-free dishes on most restaurant menus out there.

That’s perfectly logical, but it still feels as if the aggressive, blood-fuelled meat is pushing the puny vegetable off the page with a threatening “Get outta here! This menu ain’t big enough for da both of us.”

Our chefs and restaurateurs walk out onto this battleground every day with the intent to feed us and please us. I can hear them now. “But we love our vegetarian diners so much we’ve created a dedicated vegetarian menu for them, in addition to the ‘normal’ one for ‘normal’ people,” they cry. “All they have to do is ask for it.”

But how do they know it’s there?

“This drives me crazy,” writes one Good Weekend reader, who identifies as vegetarian. “Do they not understand that people like me may look at their publicly posted menu and decide not to go in? Or that vegetarians and vegans might not think to reveal themselves to get access to this apparently secret menu? Why don’t they just put their vego options on the menu?”

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She has a point. I once searched the entire menu at Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen in Singapore for its new Impossible Burger, the plant-based, alternative-meat burger designed to help wean meat-lovers off meat. It wasn’t there, so I asked the waiter. “I’m sorry, sir, it’s only on the vegetarian menu.” Yes, of course. If you really want to convince meat-eaters to eat something other than meat, hide it on a menu they’ll never think to ask for.

We meat-eaters don’t actually want to eat meat at every meal, but it wouldn’t occur to us to ask for the vegetarian menu. We might have the mortadella, then the spinach pie, and confuse everyone, including ourselves. So while we love that you care enough to provide us with vegetarian and vegan menus, dear chefs, consider bringing everything together as one. Because what we really long for, above all, is a world without division.

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