On two occasions I have accidentally been served and bitten into chicken burritos, which really sucks because you have no way of seeing the meat before it hits your mouth. I can’t even describe what that tastes like. Before I really even registered what happened I spit it out, shocked by the nasty, vile taste in my mouth and was rinsing with water. Gross! Of course all I got was a replacement and not much of an apology.

My wife and I went to a Chinese restaurant that served meat and had what I would call a ’secret’ menu - they had versions of some of their more popular chicken dishes made vegan with wheatmeat substituted. I ordered one of them and when I tasted it, I had to call the waiter over and make him swear that it was not meat. Without the immediate flavor of chicken buried under all that sauce, the texture was just like chicken. He said it was not, but I swore up and down that it was. I ate it, knowing that if he were wrong I would be violently ill. Needless to say, I was fine.

However, I’m always nervous (as are most vegans and vegetarians) as to whether this meat substitute food has never touched the same surface as meat, or whether sauce contains meat-derived stock or “natural flavors” made from animals. My wife and I have discovered a restaurant where we live in the San Fernando Valley which has become the only place we eat Chinese food. The menu is entirely vegan, and uses several variations of wheatmeat, textured soy and mushrooms to represent chicken, beef, pork and seafood used in traditional Chinese cooking, in all the classic sauces and preparations. So now we can avoid the problem of meat sneaking into the dish. And the food is great, too. I would eat there even if I was a carnivore.

At any rate, when she brought it up to the counter and told them the problem, the guy proceeded to pick the chicken off, and then hand the salad back over. Of course, she didn’t accept it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t with her, because it would have gone down a bit different. Rather than just accepting a freshly-made salad the right way, it would have also been free.

That said, the chicken gets wasted, and that really ticks me off. Same thing happened to me weeks ago at a fairly vegan-friendly restaurant on Santa Monica called the Flowering Tree. This one item allows your choice of three different “meats,” including a real one, either turkey or chicken. I can’t remember which. At any rate, I always ordered this item with the Soyrizo, ’cause it’s got a nice kick, but it came out with poultry, and you would have not wanted to see me lose my cool. I had to walk outside of the restaurant and walk around a little bit afterward. At least these guys took the item off the check after remaking it for me. But I still haven’t been back. My wife has promised never to return to this restaurant she went to tonight.

Man, if this keeps up, we’re going to be limited to vegan-only restaurants… They better keep opening at a fairly decent pace, at this rate.

But what we want to remember to communicate is, we’re not just choosing not to eat these items on a whim or to be a pain; the animal still had to die if the dish is thrown away.

Even if a dish has been vegan in the past, we can never assume that a restaurant still makes it the same way.

I’ve been in the same situation many times before. It’s funny as hell to see a group of 4 adults huddled around a chunk of *what IS it?* all scared to touch it. We argue that it could be meat, no, tofu, but…I dunno. It’s hilarious. Evenutally a meat eatter in the group munches it and sometimes…not always has a definative answer.

I live in a fairly small town, friends and I frequent a few local Thai places, and they know we are Vegan, yet twice we’ve been broughten Pad Thai w/ egg in it, once we sent it back, and the other time we didn’t eat it.

I think what’s important to do in a situation like dealing w/ a reasturant is do all that we can to become friends w/ the people, let them know who we are and where we’re coming from. I even end up talking about cooking w/ one of the owners most of the time. When a personal relationship develops, not only are you going to know you’ll be taken care of better, your FOOD will be handled better. I don’t think it’s wise to drop a business for one mistake. I’m sure if you continue to go there and let the people get to know you, they’ll start to remember, and value your business.

We’ve had chicken put in a veggie stirfry. Yup. And we got wraps with veg and tofu once at this wrap place and they put tofu in mine and chiken in my husband’s. We were the only ones ordering at that time of day - I don’t know HOW they could have messed it up.

Neither restaurant did much to compensate. The wrap place apologized profusely and gave us two free wrap coupons. We gave the coupons away, my husband had also bitten into it and said “Dreena, this is definitely chicken”. That wasn’t even a mock meat issue, because you can tell the difference between tofu and chicken!

And I agree - at some of these places you almost doubt yourself with the mock meats, and you wonder if you should eat it ‘just in case’ they made a mistake!! No worries with beans and veg, or tofu for that matter - our ’safe’ foods!!

Hope you aren’t too traumatized!! :)