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.
Agreed, it's not like I went vegan cause meat tastes bad. Gimme some of that wet sulphite n salt plz. And as I said in that thread, maybe it's not vegans, maybe you're a bad cook? The stuff I can throw together without animal products are so good you'll probably go blind. Meat is a lazy food that makes for lazy chefs, professionally anyone operating in the last 10 years or so get that vegan food is legit and there's a lot of interesting untapped ground and the trad creeps with their bullshit authentic French and Italian (American) stuff are getting wiped out cause working class to not going to Michelin rated restaurants often rich but still rich white people have broadened their pallet quite a bit over the last 20 years and stick in the mud bullshit just ain't flying vegan or otherwise. Even working non vegan places the chefs have been personally stoked to hear how to do stuff with seitan, tempeh, beans, heart of palms, whatever. Taught my 20 year experienced chef how to make good hummus like a week ago. So, yeah, even from an omni perspective they have no idea what they're talking about cause dudes who cook with meat generally are fuckimg with tofu and stuff as well cause a good chef isn't gonna ignore fantastic ingredients and dishes just cause there's no meat in play, that's juvenile and while owners still suck, kitchens are better and I can say working high level food, chefs who are really good at what they do and are on their shit are excited by new stuff they become aware of. They're wrong in every level here.
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