So tired of concern-trollers saying shit like “oh the uncreative recipes are why people hate vegans” “people hate vegans because they’re white single-issue activists” “people hate vegans because they’re annoying” “people hate vegans because the food is bad” like 1. literally none of those things are even true and 2. even if they were it’s not why people hate vegans.
also somewhat unrelated but i’m going to soapbox about substitutions: complaining about vegan substitutions is almost always anti-vegan unless it’s a person having specific qualms with a specific thing. but there are people who will shit on substitutions as a whole concept and pretend they’re so original and have the highest opinions of food ever created. like I’m sick and tired of non-vegans (and vegans too) complaining about tofu being used as a substitute in a lot of vegan dishes. just let people enjoy their goddamn food in peace.
I’ve had a vegan crab patty that tasted basically indistinguishable from a non-vegan one, but no, that’s an “uncreative substitution” per online food purists I guess. I saw a Chinese vegan restaurant make a vegan red braised pork belly from mushrooms and winter melon that was praised by omnis. The whole idea that vegans are ruining food is so funny to me because vegan restaurants are a growing market everywhere, even non-vegans are starting to catch on. Like, everyone’s starting to understand that the $15 plate from the local vegan restaurant tastes better than the $50 steakhouse.
Millenials are the chefs now and we were all hipsters that avoided any white food whenever we could to seem cool for years. Now if boomer owners could piss off, there would be a genuine change in how restaurants work. It’s not even an anti capitalism angle here, it’s the 20 year minimum age gap between owners and head chefs and those chefs are in their damn 40s, times have changed but money hasn’t changed hands. I can confidently say, cooks and chefs would be more than happy to be more and more vegan, from a professional angle most of it is more fun and also you no longer have to worry about shelving veggies above meat, you can just wipe off a cutting board with a cloth before re-using instead of send it to the dish pit and you don’t need different ones for meats and veggies, products last longer and the exchange is we make stuff that’s more fun to make and omni cooks who I’ve shown stuff have said stuff like tofu and seitan feels really satisfying to nail down. It’s novel and otherwise holy he’ll veggies are just sooooo much easier to cut too. Straight chops, no saw, fast as hell, can often be handled by a robo coup