Respecting the Food we Eat and An Ideological Flaw with Vegetarianism

It is probably way too early to be this philosophical, especially in relation to food at 9:30 on a Saturday morning, but this has been on my mind.


Earlier this week our restaurant hosted a party for PETA, an organization with which we are all familiar and all inevitably have varying sentiments. This organization provides us with twenty thousand dollars a year in business for essentially making our establishment vegetarian and vegan friendly for two days out of the year when we are rented out for their biannual staff parties. With that being said, I appreciate the business and am not about to ramble about my disdain for the organization. I am, however, going to raise what I see as a rudimentary and ideological flaw with their philosophy.
I fully support anyone that chooses to be a vegetarian for whatever reason – it is often noble and done with good intentions. The choice to become a vegetarian doesn’t really effect me and the number is never going to increase so dramatically that the restaurants I support will be threatened. There is a certain part of the world that chooses to be vegetarians due to devout religious beliefs and you can hardly blame anyone for that. Another class is the most recent emergence of Vegetarians - those who are looking for a healthier lifestyle (something that is an entirely different argument all together) and they are abstaining from foods that are sometimes high in fat or cholesterol, but in most cases, are inversely depriving their bodies of other nutrients, which are often found in meats. Their commitment to vegetarianism is not one grounded with philosophy, or ideology – still, it is an individual’s choice. There is another group of individuals that refrain from eating meats or anything tangentially related because of cruelty to animals. This is presumably the largest segment of vegetarianism, atleast in the western world, and is undoubtedly admirable. Obviously there are a lot of poorly run farms out there not treating animals with the respect they deserve, but there are also a lot of great farms that do respect these animals. This is obviously the wave of the new world, and is something that excites me as it does many of the great chefs around the world.
PETA is undoubtedly an organization striving to do good, I enjoy having them in our restaurant, and there has been a lot of good done in the name of animals, but I feel that along the way a certain misdirection has surfaced. I am not going to get into the seemingly fanatical views PETA has on some issues(breast milk ice cream, their views on seeing eye dogs and domesticated animals), and the perspective they take on certain circumstances in the real world. Last year I was walking one of their executives through our Private Lounge where we host parties and while talking I spoke of the catering we do and mentioned that a lot is done out of our other restaurant Sterlings as well, and when I explained to him that it was as steakhouse he commenced to pierce my eyes with daggers as if I had just put a bullet through the head of his six month old puppy. I refrained to explain the business behind the size of the Vegan/Vegetarian share of the market and how unrealistic it would be to have a world of vegan restaurants, or how hard it would be to support even one exclusively vegan friendly restaurant in this city! His response almost made me mad - something hard to do most of the time. Nevertheless, I kept my emotions to myself and have since thought a lot about that conversation and the close-mindedness he imbued.

So, here is the problem I have with the organization, and certain vegetarians who choose to be vegetarians based on animal cruelty. For the sake of this argument, the people who have chosen to be vegetarians for the sake of a healthier lifestyle are exempt, as well as those with religious commitments. When we host PETA, our chef works with their corporate chef to get products and ingredients that work well with the theme of the dinner. We have had several pizza parties where a soy cheese and fake sausage were used, which I don’t really embrace, but can handle. The menu for another PETA party consisted of this, and keep in mind the descriptions while not implying vegetarian indeed are; BBQ Chicken with vegan coleslaw, Burger sliders with vegan American cheese, Fried Chicken Tenders, Quesadillas, and a couple more items that were, believe it or not, intrinsically, and ideologically vegetarian such as mixed vegetables. My problem with the menu is this: the foods they are eating, and choose to eat don’t embrace the philosophy of vegetarianism. The foods mentioned above were created to replicate the flavor of something this segment of the market chooses not to eat - for whatever reason. This seems a bit heretical. They embrace the flavor of barbecue chicken, freshly grilled burgers, and the creaminess of melted cheese on top. They love a ranch dipping sauce for a crispy fried “chicken finger” or a fennel laced sausage for their pizza. Sure, this is stuff is so intrinsically American, things we are familiar with, and I am sure the challenge of being a vegetarian is difficult, but with the accessibility to farms vegetarian options are greater than ever before. Instead of embracing the flavors of the foods they vow not to eat, instead why not find ways to reinvent the foods that are distinctly and ideologically vegetarian. Hell, I probably eat as much philosophically vegetarian food as many of them. I adore just about every vegetable, fruit and legume. Granted, I eat meats, and I love seafood, but in a sense they do too. I do my best to eat locally, cook organically, and use vendors that are responsible and treat the products I eat with respect. As long as we remember where our food comes from, embrace how it came into existence by acknowledging the hands that cared for it, and most of all respect the life itself then a meal becomes more than the contents on our plates. Food should be a part of us, and it is up to us, as consumers, to be educated and informed about the foods we choose to eat and the farms we choose to support. If you respect something, then in the end it doesn’t go to waste, but rather becomes a thing of cherished beauty. This is how it works and always has. To me, that is what it all comes down to.