This is the letter I just sent to Sarah Fritche after reading (more than two weeks later) her September 30th spread "Our top vegetarian restaurants" in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Food section.
Dear Sarah Fritsche,
Thank you for your two-page spread "Our top vegetarian restaurants," which I just found today, when I was going through my vacation packet. (For more than you want to know about the complications getting the promised vacation packet, I'll send a separate e-mail. Maybe you know who would LIKE to read it.)
I missed your spread when I was in NYC enjoying its Eat for the Climate Week, September 24-September 30.
You had a good list, naming all but three of my favorite places, and I appreciate your beginning with "It has never been easier--or more delicious---to embrace a plant-based diet."
Those of us following and promoting a plant-based diet for reasons regarding animal welfare and the environment know that it's not a great sacrifice because, as you say, it's delicious, and we really want people to know that.
I plan to write a letter to the SF Chronicle, but before I do that, I'd like to name the three you didn't mention and also add a note of caution.
First the caution: It's easy to find vegetarian dishes. It's rare to find a restaurant that doesn't include at last one warm entree that's vegetarian. I think it was in 2013 that the National Restaurant Association recommended that all restaurants have at least one.
But it's not as easy to find dishes that are free of dairy and eggs, as I found out after I realized dairy animals and hens/chickens aren't treated much better than animals killed for meat.
I understand that the word "vegan" can be a turn off. (At one time it made me, in my meat-eating days, cringe. Even when I was a vegetarian, I cringed a little at the extremist sound of vegan.) But if you could use the word plant-based, I think that would send people on the right path. I hope all restaurants will be encouraged to have at least one warm plant-based entree. Taking off the cheese or hard-boiled egg from the vegetarian entree does not create the perfect vegan dish.
I was surprised that you omitted the Loving Hut from your list. I admit that the Supreme Leader video makes me squirm, but I think their food is good, and they can be found on Irving, in the Westfield Shopping Center and other places. What about Enjoy? There's an Enjoy on both Kirkham and in Chinatown.
But I think you'll be happily surprised as I was as a diner by Cybelle's Front Room Pizza on 9th near Judah--and right across from an ice cream place that has 12 kinds of vegan (pardon me--plant-based) ice cream. The manager of Cybelle's has a daughter who is vegan, and she wanted to be able to enjoy the taste and texture of all the dishes she enjoyed before she became a vegan, so she created an astonishingly good menu.
One more thing--the most important of all: The San Francisco Vegetarian Society is celebrating its 50th year with the 19th annual World Veg Fest on Saturday, October 27. Would you like to do an article on that?
Here's a link:
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