Food exploration with vegetarians / pescatarians

I just returned from a trip to Sweden and Denmark (posts and photos forthcoming) with a great friend of mine. He and I make great travel companions, and have taken trips together every year for the past few years. While he's not an LTH'r (he lives on the east coast), he's certainly one in spirit - obsessed about food and drink and happy to spend an entire vacation sampling food.

The only issue is this: he's a pescatarian.

While traveling from city to city, we were talking about food exploration and Calvin Trillin's piece on barbecue mutton. My friend said he wished he and I could do more of that kind of trip, and I said that those hole in the wall places are rarely vegetarian friendly. When I think of Pigmon's carne en su jugo adventures or Rene G's exploration of the Mother in Law, I come up blank on vegetarian-friendly pursuits.

Whenever he visits Chicago, I plan food crawl routes, but have to pass on most ideas that pop up due to the dietary restrictions. When we travel, we tend to eat at fewer carts/stalls/hole-in-the-wall/etc kinds of places, and skew to higher-end places that'll have pescatarian options.

So, I'm hoping LTH can help me out. What have your experiences been with (or as) vegetarians or pescatarians traveling and exploring food?

-Dan

In the distant past (before I could no longer resist the swan song of roast pork and jumped back on the carnivore bandwagon) I traveled around the world as an ovo-lacto vegetarian with very mixed success. I've found that you can locate meatless meals just about anywhere, but that the quality of your diet is likely to suffer if, say, you subside on cheese sandwiches,pommes frites, yogurt and fruit in, oh, Paris, for 3 months. I was ten and stubborn, what can I say?

When I spent a month in Hong Kong back in 1997, I gave up on the no-fish biz after 3 days when I realized I might starve, although I did eventually find some nice "underground" Indian dinner clubs where I could find meatless dishes. Despite the card my very nice concierge had given me stating "I eat only Buddhist food," meat found its way into nearly everything I was served in HK. Relaxing my diet to allow fish greatly simplified things. I likewise adjusted my diet on subsequent visits to Guatemala, Spain, England and France as being a pescatarian certainly makes it easier to eat and to enjoy local cuisine. South East Asia was never a problem, being very vegetarian friendly (as long as you didn't ask too many questions about broth and such.)

Oddly enough, since I've been travelling as a full-fledged carnivore again, I see many more veg friendly options out there, even in very meat driven countries like El Salvador. Perhaps it's just that there is a greater awareness of alternative diets globally or maybe I'm just more sensitive to the issue having eaten more than my fair of Yoshinoya veggie bowls and cheese sandwiches while abroad, but it does seem much easier now than in years past.

In any case, I think if you focus on places that have access to fresh seafood and/or cultures that are not meat-driven and you both go into it with open minds and a willingness to compromise, you should be able to have some great travel/dining adventures together. There are also a number of websites for vegetarians abroad that could be useful in planning such a trip http://www.vegdining.com/Home.cfm

dansch wrote:I just returned from a trip to Sweden and Denmark (posts and photos forthcoming) with a great friend of mine. He and I make great travel companions, and have taken trips together every year for the past few years. While he's not an LTH'r (he lives on the east coast), he's certainly one in spirit - obsessed about food and drink and happy to spend an entire vacation sampling food.

The only issue is this: he's a pescatarian.


Whenever he visits Chicago, I plan food crawl routes, but have to pass on most ideas that pop up due to the dietary restrictions. When we travel, we tend to eat at fewer carts/stalls/hole-in-the-wall/etc kinds of places, and skew to higher-end places that'll have pescatarian options.

So, I'm hoping LTH can help me out. What have your experiences been with (or as) vegetarians or pescatarians traveling and exploring food?

-Dan

Dan- PM me if you need more. I think you are asking about here in Chicago. Your friend, especially if he's a Pescatarian, (I'm a lacto-ovo veg who always asks about the broth ) should be fine when he visits you here.

There are GNR's like Sun Wah, Little Three Happiness, The Depot, Hot Doug's( yep I can't remember if there's fish, but there is a veggie dog ), Kuma's corner ( Veggie burger + a great salad+ Mac & Cheese+ bourbon on tap--who needs food) , Mado, Double Li, Spring World, Al-Bawadi Grill, Semiramis, Burt's Place, Spacca Napoli, Pastoral, Marie's, Sabatino's & The Brown Sack come immediately to my mind. These are a bit fancier but there's also a tavola, Avec, & Sweets & Savories.

If your buddy has a sweet tooth then there's Old Fashioned Donuts, Scooter's, & Pasticceria Natalina for sweets ( they were rockin' Kanye when I was there on Friday night-- classic Chicago IMO).

Now, what immediately comes to my mind that's not a GNR- Pita Inn, Lula, Blackbird, Prairie Fire (at my husband's birthday last weekend 1 of our guests commented that it was easy to be a vegetarian if meals like mine came out), Moon Palace, Naha, Big Star (I've been twice in the last 52 hours ),Delightful Pastries on Wells (the main branch is a GNR as well), M Henry, Tweet, Sweet Maple, Victory's Banner, Bittersweet, Franks & Dawgs ( my husband & I have gone every week in the last 6 or 7 weekends when truffle fries are available) Julius Meinl, Yummy Yummy, Intelligentsia, Nightwood, 7th Floor of Macy's ( Takashi Noodles, Marcus Samuelson's Burger, Bayliss w/ a Frontera option).

Take Care & hope to see you soon,

Ursiform wrote:I've found that you can locate meatless meals just about anywhere, but that the quality of your diet is likely to suffer if, say, you subside on cheese sandwiches,pommes frites, yogurt and fruit in, oh, Paris, for 3 months. I was ten and stubborn, what can I say?

And that seems to be the rub. My friend is extremely easy going, and will subsist on bread and cheese if needed (as will I), but obviously that's not a ton of fun. Generally we've found good food together, just no destinations where the local specialties were overall pescatarian-friendly.

Ursiform wrote:South East Asia was never a problem, being very vegetarian friendly (as long as you didn't ask too many questions about broth and such.)

That's interesting - most of my time in South East Asia was in Vietnam and I felt like pork popped up in just about everything, even when not expected. Certainly easier as a pescatarian than a vegetarian (given fish sauce in everything), but still quite limiting.

Ursiform wrote:In any case, I think if you focus on places that have access to fresh seafood and/or cultures that are not meat-driven and you both go into it with open minds and a willingness to compromise, you should be able to have some great travel/dining adventures together. There are also a number of websites for vegetarians abroad that could be useful in planning such a trip http://www.vegdining.com/Home.cfm

Thanks for the input, as well as that link. Scandinavia treated us pretty well, it's just remarkably expensive. My friend being extremely flexible and easy going helps, just trying to find some destinations that require fewer compromises on his part and allow him to try a higher percentage of the local eats. I spent some time in India earlier this year for work, and that seems like a great possibility, just trying to ferret out some others.

-Dan

pairs4life wrote:I think you are asking about here in Chicago. Your friend, especially if he's a Pescatarian, (I'm a lacto-ovo veg who always asks about the broth ) should be fine when he visits you here.

Sorry - I should have been more clear. I do pretty well when planning for his visits to Chicago and have taken him to a bunch of the places you mention (though not all... at least yet). What I'm trying to figure out is better travel destinations (or dining strategies while traveling).

When I find myself in a random place where I don't speak the language or know the dining scene, I can always eat whatever is put in front of me. When I was in Korea I could pick any little place I wanted based on it smelling good, looking busy, spidey sense, and then order by pointing randomly at a menu, someone else's plate of food, etc. Same thing in the alleys of Hanoi, hawker stalls of Singapore, etc. Often times what comes back is meat (recent examples: coxinha de galinha in Brazil and bitterballen in Holland).

All of these places will have some options for him, they're just harder to find, negotiate with language barriers, and greatly limit the overall percentage of that culture's food that he gets to taste. Maybe I think this is a bigger deal than vegetarians and pescatarians do - are you simply used to the restrictions and turning down food that's served to you if it comes back with meaty bits?

-Dan