Georgia Magazine - February 2013 - (Page 22)

Vegetarian restaurants serve up something for everyone L.A. RENO / WWW.LARENOPHOTOGRAPHY.COM Hold the meat BY DEBORAH GEERING Just as vegetarian restaurants welcome meat eaters and the ‘veggie curious,’ omnivore restaurants have gotten friendlier toward vegetarians too. Just ask Lin Sun, who has operated the highly successful Café Sunflower in Sandy Springs since 1994. The second location of the restaurant, in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, opened in 1997. “If only vegetarians ate in our restaurant, we would have been closed in the first year,” she says. “Most of our customers are not vegetarians.” They might come at first for the healthy entrees or the dairy-free and gluten-free options, but they come back because of the taste, she says. Just as vegetarian restaurants welcome meat eaters and the “veggie curious,” omnivore restaurants have 22 gotten friendlier toward vegetarians too. A couple of decades ago, vegetarians struggled to find meatless entrees in restaurants. Now, nearly every restaurant has at least one meatless offering on the menu. “It’s changed tremendously; it’s so much easier now,” says Vegetarian Society of Georgia President Jill Howard Church, who remembers how difficult it was to get a vegetarian meal back in the 1980s and The Sentient Bean’s Breakfast Burrito is available every 1990s. “You can walk into day, with a side of house-made salsa, at this favorite Burger King now and get Savannah-based restaurant. a veggie burger. You can go to Denny’s; you can go to T.G.I. mation online, where sites like vegdin Fridays. A lot of the family-oriented ing.com and happycow.net keep tabs chains have incorporated vegetarian, on vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly and sometimes vegan, options in their restaurants. And smart phone apps meals.” like VegOut, VeganSteven and HapStill, vegetarians have to be mind- pyCow make it easy to find a vegeful. “Vegetarian” is not a standard tarian-friendly restaurant on the go. term. One person may interpret “vegDeborah Geering is a food and etarian” to mean no animal-made gardening writer from Decatur, products, including eggs or honey where she grows and eats her own (also known as vegan); another may vegetables. interpret it to mean no red meat. “You have to ask,” Church says. “You have to ask about the beans in Mexican restaurants,” which are traditionally cooked in lard. In Chinese restaurants, where sauces often have chicken or fish broth in the base, “You can always ask for things without sauce, and then put soy sauce on it. … I’ve even known people who carry their own bottle of sauce.” But if you’re looking for a true vegetarian dining experience in Georgia, try one of the restaurants listed on The Grit in Athens has been serving up page 25. You can get updated infor- vegetarian fare for more than two decades. ERS GROUP INDEPENDENT PUBLISH V egetarians are all too familiar with this scenario: An office pizza party, a stack of pizzas, a line of hungry co-workers. But by the time the office’s one vegetarian gets to the food, the veggie pizza is long gone. Why? Because just about everyone enjoys an occasional meatless meal. Even in meat-loving Georgia, vegetarian restaurants thrive. At last count, there were more than two dozen around the state, mostly in the Atlanta area. But these restaurants aren’t just for vegetarians—they’re for all those folks who like an occasional meatless meal. More online at www.georgiamagazine.org GEORGIA MAGAZINE http://WWW.LARENOPHOTOGRAPHY.COM http://www.vegdining.com http://www.vegdining.com http://www.happycow.net http://www.georgiamagazine.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - February 2013

Georgia Magazine - February 2013
The 2013 Readers’ Choice Awards
Table of Contents
Viewpoint
Liberty Notes
Georgia News
Calendar of Events
Picture This?
Currents
My Georgia
A Safe Haven
Around Georgia: Return to Tara
Georgia Cooks
Snapshot

Georgia Magazine - February 2013