Good to see they keep you in mind as well.
5 Comments So Far
06/15/2008 @11:16 am GMT
Hungary is improving, but vegetarian in most cases still means one cheese dish or soup next to thirty-forty other choices. At first, I thought that the menu item was vegetarian or ham and cheese, until I read the German, which is explicit in that it states Vegetarian Sandwich with ham and cheese.
06/16/2008 @9:16 am GMT
My favourite was the time in Spain when we asked about some potato dish being veggie and it was a definate ‘yes’ then arrives with a huge piece of chorizo on top. Or the time in Germany when the ‘grun salat’ turned out to be a pile of kebab shavings. The spanish incident was definately not a lanague thing, but the germany one probably was as I spoke better german than the staff.
I assumed Japan would be easier for veggies?
06/16/2008 @12:03 pm GMT
Since when ham is not veggie friendly? And chorizo??? I give you chicken, bordeline meat if you will, but have you ever seen a chorizo in motion? No? Well, there you go, it’s not meat.
06/16/2008 @11:06 pm GMT
Jaime, I think you might be on to something…
I find that none of the usual code words for “vegetarian” carry any currency here in Japan either – “vegetable pasta”, for example, almost invariably contains bacon. Even on being asked “is this dish suitable for vegetarians”, waiters will often reply in the affirmative as long as there’s no solid, visible meat in the dish, even if it’s marinated all night in pork fat. Usually people don’t advertise stuff as “vegetarian” unless it actually is, but there are a scant few places that offer anything like that.