I live and work in New York City, and when I'm not at my "real job," I spend most of my time exploring the varied and fascinating food scene the city offers. While it can be tough being a vegetarian in a city of sushi and steak, I love discovering veggie-friendly food in both vegetarian and non-vegetarian restaurants and blogging about my experiences on lifewithfoodanddrink. Should you ever find yourself in the food mecca that is the Big Apple, I hope my recommendations can point you towards satisfying and delightful veggie destinations!
As a vegetarian who regularly dines out in non-vegetarian restaurants, I’ve mastered the art of creatively composing meals from non-traditional areas of the menu. By that I mean rather than going the appetizer-entrée route—which is often difficult, as many restaurants offer limited or no vegetarian entrée selections - I stray to the outer corners of the menu to find the building blocks of my meal.
Take a recent excursion to Mario Batali’s Otto, for example. Otto is a fantastic casual pizzeria-enoteca in Manhattan’s West Village; it’s often packed with diners seeking the trademark pizza, delightful pastas, and sumptuous gelato (sometimes purported to be the best in the city). The menu offers several vegetarian selections, including a large list of salads, pastas, and veggie-topped pizzas. But rather than make my selection from those offerings, I stuck entirely to the realm of vegetable antipasto, ordering a mélange of three veggies (vin cotto-glazed Brussels sprouts, broccoli with pecorino, and roasted mushrooms). For much less than the cost of a salad and pasta or pizza, I enjoyed a large and quite filling amount of food and got to taste several different dishes in small-bite format. It was a spectacular and memorable meal.
While Otto, or really any Italian or tapas restaurant, is particularly well suited to this dining strategy, it can work in almost any restaurant. Consider ordering two or three vegetable sides as your meal, or order two salads as an appetizer or entrée. Don’t feel you necessarily have to follow the “traditional” meal progression, something that’s often difficult and confining for a vegetarian. If you look, can find delicious and often low-cost vegetarian gems hiding on the outskirts of the menu.
Oftentimes, it’s easy for a vegetarian to feel excluded in a fine-dining town. After all, so much of “fine dining” is meat-centric: foie gras, kobe beef, lobster. But my recent experience at Eleven Madison Park, one of New York City’s most highly acclaimed restaurants, is a lesson in why vegetarians don’t have to skip the best places when eating out—and an instruction in the most important thing we can do to make our experience the best it can be.
I made my reservation through Opentable, the online restaurant reservations website. Opentable provides an opportunity for a diner to add special comments to his or her reservation, and when faced with the comment box, I noted that I was a vegetarian. This disclosure allowed the restaurant to prepare for my arrival, and indeed, one of the first things our waiter said after greeting us was, “I understand one of you is a vegetarian?”
Notifying the restaurant of your dining restrictions in advance enables the kitchen to make preparations for your arrival. If the restaurant does not have many vegetarian options, the cooks can brainstorm and collect ingredients before you arrive—and thus not be forced to scramble and throw together something less-than-gourmet (pasta with tomato sauce, anyone?) at the last minute. Furthermore, if the restaurant simply cannot accommodate you—and for some fine restaurants, this is the simple truth—you can spend your dining dollars elsewhere, where you’ll get the truly fine vegetarian meal you deserve.
Eleven Madison Park went out of its way to provide me with a special, vegetarian-friendly meal. The waiter discussed my options at every step in the evening, giving me several choices and allowing me to choose what made me most comfortable. But even restaurants less focused on service can provide you with a top-notch vegetarian meal. All it takes is a little advance notice.
New York is a city of distinct neighborhoods, and each neighborhood offers its own unique set of food-related treats. While part of the fun of visiting or living in New York is discovering these offerings yourself, what follows is a woefully incomplete list of some of the highlights of New York’s most popular neighborhoods:
Union Square (between 14th and 16th Streets, Broadway and Park Avenue South): The star attraction of Union Square is by far the Union Square Greenmarket, which occurs every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Purveyors from around the region offer a lovely selection of fruits, vegetables, fresh meats and seafood, artisanal cheeses and breads, and everything from maple syrup to dessert wines. Definitely a must-see.
Chelsea: Walk west from Union Square and take an hour to explore Chelsea Market (located between 15th and 16th Streets and 9th and 10th Avenues). The converted warehouse, home of the Food Network studios, offers a wide range of food-related outlets, from a wine shop to a kitchen supply store. Don’t miss Buon Italia, an Italian imported food store (rows and rows of cheese, chocolate, pasta, olive oil, and much more); Manhattan Fruit Exchange (for the best and cheapest selection of dried fruit in the city); and Amy’s Bread for their black-and-white cupcake.
Tribeca: This alluring neighborhood of quaint shops and local bakeries offers the newest Whole Foods in New York City. Check out the incredible salad bar and the rock sugar/rock salt bars!
Greenwich Village: A food lover’s paradise, the winding streets of the West Village offer untold treasures waiting to be discovered. Be sure to stop by Murray’s Cheese on Bleecker Street for more varieties of cheese than you’ve ever seen before.
Midtown East: Chock-full of bland office buildings and apartment high-rises, Midtown East sports a hidden gem inside Grand Central Station: the Grand Central Market. This Harrods-style food hall has outposts of the city’s most popular food vendors, from Zaro’s Bread Basket (breads and pastries) to Dishes (prepared foods). Be sure to stop in if your train is passing through.
So there are a few starter suggestions—while they barely scratch the surface of what Manhattan has to offer, they’ll get your food tour of the city off to a good start!
New York City has an astounding variety of places to eat, from sandwich shops to temples of haute cuisine. But in between the steakhouses, the sushi joints, and the street meat carts, what’s a vegetarian to do?
I’ve lived in NYC for over a year, and I spend most of my free time exploring the city’s food scene and recording my experiences in my food blog (lifewithfoodanddrink.blogspot.com). I’m a vegetarian with a large group of carnivorous friends, so most of my restaurant visits are to non-vegetarian restaurants. But every now and then I rope someone into a trip to a vegetarian place, of which there are several in each neighborhood. This past weekend, I visited Counter, an organic vegetarian restaurant and martini bar in the East Village.
Counter is definitely on the upscale end of the vegetarian-restaurant spectrum. It specializes in organic wines and cocktails and creative, thoughtful vegetarian food. Together, my friend and I sampled the hummus appetizer, which was smoky and flavorful and came with puffy triangles of flatbread; the penne with pesto, broccoli rabe, sun-dried tomatoes, and portabello mushrooms; and the Mediterranean Amuse salad. All the food was solid and made with high-quality ingredients. Counter also thoughtfully notes on its menu which of its dishes are raw and which have cheese, which makes ordering easy and stress-free for vegetarians, vegans, and raw-foodists alike. We were too full to order dessert, although their crème brulee and raw macadamia pistachio tart both looked tempting. Next time, perhaps!
Counter is a friendly and welcoming destination, especially if you’re in the East Village. Stay tuned for more veggie news from the Big Apple!
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