This doesn't have any relevance to Putney, UK, so I'm not really sure why it was posted on this forum. I'm guessing it was just a childish move to prompt a response? Ah, well, I've some time on a train journey through Kent. (Couldn't do this while driving a car!)Interestingly, many top chefs pride themselves on being able to accommodate vegans and veggies even if that's not their main speciality. Additionally, top chef Alexis Gauthier has now converted his Soho restaurant to be all vegan as is his 123V bistro in Fenwicks, Bond Street, and he's opening two new restaurants in the BFI Soho building - going vegan seems to have been a good business move for him!In the UK it also makes commercial sense for smaller and chain restaurants; if you can't cater for veggies and vegans you'll lose the business of social groups who include one or more of those and they'll also be excluded from work lunches and dinners as it's discriminatory not to cater for vegans at such functions (I believe there's beens a test case, don'thave time to confirm) - not forgetting there may also be employees with religious dietary requirements that must be catered for.I believe what sparked this off was that he took a booking knowing at least one dinner was a vegan and then forgot to provide something suitable. That resulted in, not unreasonable, getting a bad online review. He seemed to then throw his toys out of the pram even though it was poor business management on his part that the vegan didn't get a suitable meal that he'd agreed to provide!All good London restaurants seem to have a backup of a mushroom or pea vegan/veggie risotto for such eventualities so that's more bad planning on his part - I won't name the top London restaurant catering for a corporate marketing event I attended where I need to confirm with two employees that fish wasn't a vegetable, even though I'd previously clarified with the event organiser that I didn't eat fish. But they did produce a mushroom risotto, presumably out of their freezer, which was perfectly acceptable. When my wife was taken to the same restaurant for business luch from the a la carte menu they produced an excellent bespoke vegan meal (ok, you get, or should get, what you pay for).Phillipa hs already, I think, covered why veganism is better for personal and planetary health:-)
Michael Ixer ● 721d