Faux Food

I had an interesting meal a few days ago. I am a dedicated carnivore and tend to regard vegetarians with deep suspicion. And I’ve especially never understood those vegetarians who like to eat pretend meat. If you’re going to be a vegetarian, and you have every right so to do, then eat vegetables happily. Don’t come the martyr by torturing yourself by pretending the veggies are meat. You chose to give it up. Live without it! 

So, to my shock, I found myself in a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. The menu is covered in dishes such as beef, pork, lamb, chicken, duck, fish, prawns, lobster, snails etc. Except it isn’t. Everything is 100% vegetarian.

We ordered some black pepper steak. It looked like black pepper steak, it smelled like black pepper steak and it tasted like black pepper steak, but it had never been near a cow in its life.

The chicken also had a chickeny texture, looked vaguely chickeny and tasted remarkable chickeny for something which had never laid an egg (or hatched from one).

So we wolfed it down then wandered round the corner for some real meat kebabs and seafood. Dinner No. 2. Although the faux food looked, smelled and tasted right, it just didn’t fill us up - although it was interesting.

My somewhat idiosyncratic translation of the somewhat idiosyncratic menu can be downloaded here (PDF format)

tags: liuzhou  vegetarian  meat  steak  chicken  

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