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Eat Veggie in Oxford

Itchy guides you through the nightmare of eating out as a Veggie in Oxford

Eating out as a veggie's a bit of a nightmare as it is. It's hard enough tolerating all the "Oh right, you're a vegetarian, eh? That's ok, we've got a chicken dish on the menu..." responses to your limited menu options, but on top of that, there's a whole slew of other ingredients to watch out for when you're a vegetarian in a restaurant. Here's Itchy's guide to what ingredients to worry about when eating out as a vegetarian.

Meat Stock
Vegetarians, don't be fooled by the sight of vegetable soup on the menu as a veggie option. You're going to want to find out what kind of stock it was made from. Unless a menu clearly indicates that the soup is vegan you can’t be totally sure what it is made of. Different vegetable soups can be made with either meat stock or vegetable stock so be cautious.

Anchovies
So you’re in a restaurant and you want a good salad. And when it comes to ordering a dressing for the salad, you figure it’s probably okay to order any dressing because they can’t put anything that a vegan can’t eat in a dressing. Wrong. You’re not safe with just any dressing. Caesar salad dressing, for example, has anchovies in it. Those slippery tiny fishes seem to make their way into other food products like Worcestershire sauce and salads.

Bone Char
This one is probably the grossest of all. In order to make sugar, bone char is often used as a filtering device to separate sugar from the sugar cane. Bone char doesn’t actually get into the sugar but it still may disgust you.  What is bone char? It’s decomposed animal bones. Think again when you’re putting that teaspoon of sugar in your coffee.     

Nightmare, eh? Well, fear not. Being the kindly peeps we are, we've done some painstaking research to find you this lovely Oxford vegan restaurant to eat out at without damaging your vegetarian credentials: Al-Shami

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