I SAY, I say, I say. How do you work out if someone is a vegan? You don’t have to. They will definitely tell you. It may be slightly cruel, but I have yet to hear a joke about vegans that isn’t. What is it about our meat, fish and dairy-eschewing fellow citizens that causes such rancour?
Ask Laura Goodman, co-owner and head chef at a place called Carlini in Shropshire. After a group of diners booked in for dinner on a Friday night, Goodman, in the wee small hours of Saturday morning, wrote on social media: “Pious, judgmental vegan (who I spent all day cooking for) has gone to bed, still believing she’s a vegan.”
Can you imagine being a member of the aforementioned group of diners and reading such a missive? That’s exactly what happened. Goodman, asked by another member of the group whether her comment meant she’d intentionally done something to make the meal non-vegan, replied: “Actually, I should have said ‘they’re’ not a vegan … not ‘she’s’.” In a separate post, she later wrote: “Spiked a vegan a few hours ago.”
Vegan hell broke loose. TripAdviser was inundated with complaints as was the Facebook page where Goodman originally made her comments. Legal action has been threatened and there have allegedly been death threats. (It does seem slightly comical that vegans who want no animal to be harmed might issue death threats to a human being.)
Michael Gale, the restaurant’s co-owner with Goodman, described the unfurling events as having turned their world upside down. Goodman resigned and the restaurant apologised.
As a chef and once restaurateur, I confess that I once had similar feelings to Goodman. My anti-vegan stance stemmed from ignorance and an apparent lack of ability to satisfy the vegan palate. But I learned soon enough. When I had my restaurant in Leith we had a weekly vegan night and many dishes on the menu could easily be tweaked for vegan diners.
Of all the food-related -isms, veganism makes the most sense. My friend, the stand-up comic Romesh Ranganathan, is a vegan and in one of his routines he points out the bizarre notion that we not only eat the flesh of a cow, but embellish it with a product made from said cow’s milk. I haven’t eaten a cheeseburger since watching that routine.
A few years ago I went to Tel Aviv to write a travel piece about vegan food. The Israeli city has the world’s most vibrant dairy and meat-free scene. In cafes or restaurants you are offered three different menus: meat, vegetarian and vegan. The vegan food I had there was invariably inventive and delicious.
There’s a good reason why certain chefs don’t react well to vegans, and to some extent I agree with Goodman: vegans can be pious and judgemental on occasion. Like born-again Christians, vegans seem to think we omnivores are committing heinous sins by eating the flesh and enjoying the milk of animals, just as that specific brand of Christians think all of us heathens will be spending eternity in hell fire (no doubt barbecuing succulent meat flesh marinaded in excellent hot sauce as we burn).
While I doubt I can ever become a full-time vegan, I know that my first-born is toying with the idea and his sister might well end up heading in that direction. Though I once abhorred vegetarianism, age and understanding have brought me to the point where I would consider going vegan for a week every month. (Sometimes I don’t even know who I am.)
Here’s the thing chefs like Goodman need to ask themselves. Supposing she did spike that table’s food, what would that have achieved? Would she have changed their outlook on how they ate and made a compelling argument for a more omnivorous diet? Or simply lost her job and thrown the world of her employees and business partner into a tumult of turmoil?
As our world strains under the abuse we deliver it, as commercial modes of meat production make the lives of our fellow animals hellish, perhaps we all need to grow up a bit, respect the views of others and start to do a little more to make our world a better place.
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