Salad is defined as ‘a cold dish of various mixtures of raw or cooked vegetables, usually seasoned with oil, vinegar or other dressing and sometimes accompanied by meat fish or other ingredients.

As a vegetarian eating out ‘sometimes accompanied’ needs to be changed to ‘uusally accompanied by meat or fish’. A large number of establishments do not offer a vegetarian salad. Now is it just me or does this sound a bit bizarre? A traditionally vegetable based dish that vegetarians can’t eat.

My theory is thqt it is the fear of producing a dish without an obvvious protein element – prefectly acceptable for a side saladh, but not for a main.
Of course the easiest default here is cheese, but even that doesn’t happen that often (sigh of relief) Why is it that other ingredients are overlooked? Mixed beans, nuts (ooh pine nuts), quinoa, egg- all these seem to be overlooked.
I’m not the best cook in the world but I don’t understand why creating a salad around non meant or fish ingredients is so difficult.

The most annoying part is asking for a meat free version and being told it can’t be done. A restaurant I visited recenlty told me I couldn’t have the avocado and bacon salad without the bacon as it was pre mixed. This being the case Im not sure how they cannback up their boast of everything being freshly made, and thus may take longer to serve. What a waste of avocado. By pre-mixing they have just made their menu less flexible and reduced the choice available, with little extra effort.

Some of the bigger chains do offer some gorgeous vege friendly salads and are, in my experience, more able to be flexible and take out elements you may not want to eat. It is ususally the independent restaurants and pubs – the ones we need to be supporting – that seem to be missing a trick here.

So next time you are eating out, check out the salad section. How many immediatley vegetarian freindly options are there? And does the menu indicate that you are welcome to ask for changes.