More times than I can count, I’ve heard the same refrain from my vegetarian relatives visiting New York: This is not a friendly city for the meat-averse. Restaurants don’t offer enough meatless options, they say, especially dishes that are as filling and interesting as the nonvegetarian ones.
How could that be? We live in an era when “plant-based” and “vegetable forward” are cultural buzzwords, and New York has one of the most diverse and robust restaurant scenes in America.
Yet when I asked readers to share their experiences of dining while vegetarian, I heard from scores of New Yorkers who agree with my relatives.
Several told me that because many restaurants shrank their menus to cut costs during the pandemic, it’s harder than ever to go meatless. “We used to have two options” on any given menu, said Charlotte Brooks, a Baruch College professor who lives in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. “You may now not have one.”
Tracie Lyons, a lawyer who lives on the Upper West Side, said that since she became a vegetarian in 2020, “dining out has ceased to be a joy and is now more of a chore.” She has to research each restaurant beforehand to make sure there will be options for her.
For all those disappointed diners, though, plenty of others called New York a vegetarian’s paradise. It’s an even better place to dine out than San Francisco and Los Angeles, said Raghu Hariharan, who works in financial services and lives in the Flatiron district. He pointed to the wide variety of cuisines available, many of them vegetarian-friendly.
Dan Friedman, a retired banker on the Upper West Side, said that being a vegetarian 50 years ago meant eating lettuce at every meal. Now, chefs are getting more creative. “If the chef can’t conceive of what a good vegetarian meal is, they shouldn’t be working,” he said.
I decided to see for myself if it was possible to find not just sustenance but outright delight as a meat-free diner. So I ate at a dozen of the top 20 places on this year’s New York Times list of the city’s 100 best, identifying myself as a vegetarian and sometimes bringing along vegetarian companions. (For the record, I am not a vegetarian, though I was for the first 18 years of my life).
I learned that while there’s little uniformity to how restaurants deal with vegetarian or vegan customers, there’s a lot of predictability. Here are seven basic responses I encountered — from the least accommodating to the most welcoming — and a few tips on how to make them work for you.
The Polite Refusal
Many restaurants with set multicourse tasting menus — like Atomix, Blanca and Yoshino, in The Times’s top 20 — warn prospective diners on their websites or reservation pages that they simply will not tweak their lineups to accommodate vegetarians. Abandon all hope: The menus may include some vegetable dishes, but you’ll spend a lot and go home hungry.
Purti Pareek, a lawyer who lives on the Upper West Side, respects the forthrightness of these places. “Chefs should be able to do what they want, and they put so much effort into creating the restaurants and creating their own point of view,” she said. “But on the other hand, it makes me sad and annoyed as a vegetarian who wants to eat out at places like that and wants to experience every type of cuisine the world has to offer.”
The Default Pasta
At many restaurants, pasta is often the lifesaver thrown to the vegetarian customer. And the meat-free versions — cacio e pepe, marinara and the like — can become way too familiar.
When restaurants “immediately jump to pasta, that is a very sad reply,” said Mr. Friedman, the retired banker. “I find that a completely no-effort offer.”
But at three restaurants I visited, familiar didn’t mean underwhelming. The cacio e pepe at Via Carota is one of the best in the city — each noodle is generously glossed with cheese and butter inflected with coarsely cracked pepper. The cheese tortellini at Torrisi are as plump as pillows, the tomato sauce bright and alive. The tagliatelle with tomato butter at Ci Siamo is summer, captured. These restaurants also have a robust selection of vegetables. Pair their pastas with dishes like the briny, dill-coated Cucumbers New Yorkese at Torrisi or the big, fluffy green salad at Via Carota, and you’ll have an exciting meal.
The Dish Minus Meat
Often, when I specified I was a vegetarian, the server offered to have the meat removed from dishes. This was a considerate gesture, but I usually found the results unsatisfying.
At Estela, a small-plates restaurant known for its unexpected flavor pairings, the endive salad lacked its sharp umami without the anchovy. The cherry tomatoes without dried shrimp were just a bowl of cherry tomatoes. I filled up on ricotta dumplings and left craving protein.
“It’s like, ‘We are going to take out the flavor and charge you just as much,’” said Ms. Brooks, the college professor.
The One Great Option
The most common strategy among restaurants is to offer a single non-meat entree. The result can feel, and taste, obligatory.
But sometimes that dish is a highlight of the menu. The mushroom ramyun at Jeju Noodle Bar had a buttery, complex broth that made me forget I was in a seafood restaurant. The Chinese-takeout-inspired mushrooms at Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi, wrapped in a scallion pancake slicked in plum sauce, were as boldly flavored as the restaurant’s signature short-rib pastrami suya.
“I only need one entree,” said Samuel Shapiro, a graduate student who lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. “But that one has to be treated with the same care and thought and attention as the other entrees, and if it is, I will be perfectly satisfied.”
The Ad Hoc Offering
Most vegetarians I interviewed said they never inform the server of their diet, worried that they’ll be labeled difficult or treated as if their dietary restriction isn’t valid. But those who do speak up said restaurants will often whip up a dish or two that’s not on the menu.
At the seafood restaurant Cervo’s, the kitchen recently prepared a summery panzanella for Amanda Price, a product marketing manager from Fort Greene, Brooklyn, after her partner told the server she was vegetarian.
The menu at Mam, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Lower East Side, doesn’t look promising to a vegetarian. But when I identified myself as one, the server proposed a version of the bún đậu đặc biệt, a platter of meats with rice noodles and a fish-based sauce that instead had mushrooms, tofu and a soy-based sauce. That platter was one of the most satisfying restaurant dishes I’ve eaten all year. All it took was asking nicely.
The Meat-Free Tasting Menu
Eleven Madison Park grabbed a lot of attention a few years back by going completely vegan. Today, several of the city’s fine-dining restaurants offer meat-free tasting menus. Mr. Friedman, the retired banker, tried Le Bernardin’s vegetarian tasting and was delighted to be served more than just plate after plate of vegetables. There were legumes, nuts and layers of flavor, he said. “They understand what a complete vegetarian dish consists of.”
I found every dish at Le Bernardin’s tasting menu to be technically well executed — the soba was nicely chewy, and the warm artichokes drizzled with truffle vinaigrette were delicate and soft. But few of the eight courses felt as exciting or ambitious as the seafood dishes I had on previous visits. Even the desserts felt pared back — other tables got a chocolate tart, while I was served sorbet. And the experience wasn’t cheap: $250 before tax and tip. Still, it felt nice to receive such consideration as a vegetarian at one of the city’s most acclaimed restaurants.
The Ready-Made Feast
The city has a number of beloved vegetarian haunts, like Superiority Burger, Dirt Candy and Buddha Bodai. But many more restaurants specialize in cuisines that, while not meat-free, are inherently abundant in vegetables and legumes. At Trinciti Roti Shop, which serves Trinidadian food, between the chickpea-stuffed doubles, the aloo pie and the pumpkin with curry potatoes, I found almost too many vegetarian options. At Semma, a South Indian restaurant, many of my favorite dishes — including the crispy gunpowder dosa and the peanut-stuffed peppers — happen to be vegetarian.
“It was nice to have choices,” Saumya Parikh, a software engineer in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, said of his first time dining at Semma. He loved that he wasn’t familiar with many of the dishes, since dining out as a vegetarian rarely involves any surprise.
The Takeaway
It is very possible to eat well in New York as a vegetarian. Your options may be limited, and you may keep running into the same dishes, namely pasta, risotto and veggie burgers. But speak up — ideally, when making your reservation — and you may be surprised at how accommodating a restaurant can be. Take advantage of the city’s diversity, as many cuisines are rich in vegetarian choices.
Finally, learn to love mushrooms, if you don’t already. Because you’re going to be eating a lot of them.
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