Went to another awards banquet...

[WillParkinson]

My meal choice was listed as Vegan. Even got a cute little blue card with the word written on it.

My meal consisted of cold pasta with some herb that tasted like pencil shavings, warm tomatoes and huge chunks of broccoli and cauliflower.

When the meal was over they brought out a slice of (non-vegan) carrot cake and plopped it in front of me and offered me a glass of milk. All while my cute little blue card sat in front of me.

Why do I bring this up, you might ask?

Well, I'm gonna tell you!

I work in a hotel. We have a banquet next week that asks for 3 vegan meals. I wrote to the chef today and asked what he was going to serve and offered to bring him in some really good stuff that I found (the teriyaki stuff I mentioned in an earlier thread) as well as going to a vegan bakery and picking up some stuff from there so that the folks will have an actual vegan meal start to finish.

I hope that he likes my suggestion.

[CrispyQ]

1. I hope he listens to your suggestion!

It's one of the reasons we hardly ever eat out. A vegan meal at most restaurants consists of some type of soggy squash with bland rice & the rest of the plate is filled with other over-cooked veggies. :eyes: And they charge you almost the same as the meat dishes.

California Pizza Kitchen had a lovely miso salad of nappa, carrots, avocado & edamame with a wonderful miso dressing. If you wanted chicken or seafood added to the dish, you had to order it & pay more. The price of the salad has gone up & now the default is with seafood. I ask to have mine without & I still pay the same price as the meat version. :grr: I've written to them several times asking them to offer baked tofu on that salad, but to no avail.

Oh, & last time my salad came complete with a mound of seafood on it. I sent it back. Did I get a fresh salad? No. I got the same salad, minus the mound, but there were little pieces of crabmeat on it that they couldn't quite remove. I complained & got a fresh free salad, but what the fuck? I stopped going there.

[yewberry]

2. Yum yum!

Sounds dreadful. The last time I was at a conference, the hotel's "vegan" meal I got was a tomato, avocado, and cream cheese sandwich...on a croissant! For two days!

I hope your guests fare better than we have!

[WillParkinson]

3. Well the chef said...

He's got "vast" experience with vegan items.

For the sake of our guests I hope he's right.

[LeftyMom]

4. I was at an animal rights conference once where the hotel-catered "vegan" meal wasn't vegan.

They put out, among other things, gigantic bowls of dairy cheese and dairy-based dressings for the salad course. I heard there was more non-vegan stuff later in the meal, but I was on my way out the door to go do a demo, so that's the only stuff I saw personally and can verify with my own eyes.