A vegetarian abroad

While walking along a bustling harbour in Crete, full to the brim with restaurants, we are spoilt for choice for dinner. When I ask if there are vegetarian meals, a tall Greek waiter answers the question. With his big, innocent eyes and very convincing tone, I am sure that I have come to the right place and I choose the meal that he ‘highly recommends’. He scuttles into the kitchen with our order, only to come out a few minutes later with what I presumed to be a vegetarian moussaka but, after tasting, I can be certain that it contained meatballs and mince.

With a family of devout carnivores, I was alone in my horror at being handed a plate of lamb. I was also upset because aside from the condition of ‘no-animals-on-my-plate-please’, I’m an open-minded eater, and I enjoy trying different cuisines. At the end of our two-week holiday and 52 spinach and feta pies later (a delicious local delicacy, but only in moderation) I never wanted to see another bit of feta again. I concluded that in Greece, the problem wasn’t a lack of vegetarian options, but that when you chose one, you weren’t sure whether it was vegetarian or not.

It wasn’t that the Greeks were determined to turn me into a meat-lover, but rather that the language barrier caused some things to get lost in translation. That, and the competition of many other restaurants means that local business owners are desperate for your custom and will say anything to get you to eat at their restaurant. On top of that, when a dish appears by all accounts to be meat-free, there’s nothing to say that it hasn’t been cooked in beef stock or fried in animal fat.

As other well-travelled vegetarians might agree, you don’t realise quite how accommodating Britain is to vegetarians until you’ve been abroad. Examples of this include a margherita pizza I ordered in France that turned up with lardons hidden discreetly under the mozzarella, and in Italy when I was promised ‘a lovely little dish’ only to end up with three roasted sparrows adorning my plate. As for buying vegetarian products like Quorn or tofu in European supermarkets, you’re more likely to get results searching for a three-headed dragon.

And yet, in Greece, on an island where there were restaurants stretching along the harbour as far as the eye could see, not one seemed to offer me anything more varied than those delicious but over-eaten spinach pies or a Greek salad. However, I chanced upon a tiny restaurant with a sign outside that shone like a beacon of hope in a land of very, very little Quorn! The sign simply read: ‘Traditional Organic Vegetarian Restaurant’, and my heart did a little jump of joy.

So after some convincing, I dragged my family to this restaurant and it was fantastic. We asked the owner to bring us a selection of dishes –an exciting prospect, as vegetarians are rarely able to tuck in without asking questions beforehand. It was all delicious – even my step-father, who is baffled by my dietary choices and refuses to eat anything I cook as I don’t cook meat, was impressed by the selection and quality of the food.

When we got back to the villa, I googled the restaurant, finding adoring comments from hundreds of relieved veggies on the restaurant’s facebook and various travel websites. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who was grateful to have found somewhere to eat out. Although I’d never considered it before, there are plenty of other vegetarians with the same problem: wanting to travel the world AND still be able to eat. These crazy vegetarians had the crazy idea of setting up a website to tell you where to find vegetarian restaurants the world over! The best one I found was http://www.happycow.net/ . Simply type in the your location and the site will list all of the vegetarian-friendly restaurants in the vicinity!

In short, travelling as a vegetarian is not without its fall-backs, and you must be prepared for meat to occasionally land on your plate. However, more and more people are choosing a vegetarian lifestyle, so with a bit of  research in advance, your chances of finding somewhere vegetarian-friendly are getting improving. For now, be thankful that you live in Britain, because never in England have I told someone of my vegetarianism only to be asked, ‘do you eat chicken?’