Common Vegetarian Options at Restaurants, Ranked
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Anyone who has been eating a vegetarian diet for long enough will have grown accustomed to the most common dishes available to them at your standard American restaurants. While options and variety have been increasing in recent years, I’ve rounded up twelve of the classics for this list, in order of worst to best.
12. Garden Salad
I’m pretty sure every vegetarian has, at one point, arrived at their grandparents’ 50th anniversary at the local seafood restaurant on the pier, scanned the menu, and begun to tear up when they see the only thing remotely vegetarian is a garden salad.
Garden salads are a ubiquitous menu item that consist of a side plate of greens topped with shredded carrots, 2-3 cherry tomatoes, and, if you’re lucky, a couple slices of red onion. They cost $14.
11. Bowls
A “bowl” generally refers to some kind of grain or quinoa with various toppings and a dressing. Most of the toppings are raw vegetables. Basically, it’s a salad. For some reason, everyone is absolutely convinced that “bowls” are a main food group for vegetarians.
I can eat a bowl of sad brown rice with random stuff from my vegetable drawer at home after saying all weekend I would definitely go grocery shopping on Monday after work and that day has come and I will definitely go Tuesday after work. I don’t want to spend $15 on this basic-ass food item for lunch and be disappointed with my life choices for the rest of the day.
10. Penne
This one shows up at restaurants that are not Italian and you’re a little confused about why they randomly have 3 pasta dishes. One of them is vegetarian and it IS penne and it DOES have zucchini and it DOES NOT taste like anything EXCEPT dried oregano which is the ONLY seasoning.
9. Vaguely Asian Stir-Fry
This one is made out of mixed frozen vegetables and, if you’re lucky, also contains noodles. It’s better than penne because it will at least be seasoned with soy sauce. It goes without saying that nothing else on the menu has even heard of “the Orient”.
8. Lasagna
Lasagna is amazing. The obligatory vegetarian lasagna you get as your one option to avoid staring, mealless, at your boyfriend guzzling down oysters, is often lackluster. Heck, even vegetarian lasagna at actual Italian restaurants can be upsetting. The description of the meat lasagna will be like, “Nonna’s old-world recipe passed down for generations with a tender ragu sauce simmered for 14 hours and nestled between layers and layers of cheese and bechamel!” Then the vegetarian one is like, “Made just the way vegetarians love it: OVERFLOWING with ZUCCHINI!!”
People. Vegetarians also want layer upon layer of sauce and cheese. CHILL on the zucchini!
7. Caprese Sandwich
This is probably the most common vegetarian sandwich option you will encounter: mozzarella, tomato, basil. It’s often kind of bland, since–let’s be real–most regular ol’ restaurants in the US aren’t pulling out the artisanal cheese and heirloom tomatoes for their vegetarian obligation sandwich–but it’s fine.
6. Veggie Melt
A bit less common (depending on where you are, I guess), but possibly more interesting than the caprese sandwich is the intriguingly vague “veggie melt”. It’ll have veggies and cheese. What type? Who knows, but I’m in. (Unless it’s a pile of watery zucchini, then I’m out.) You could probably analyze the state of the economy based on what selection of vegetables you get.
5. Spaghetti Pomodoro
Here we have an underrated pasta contender: spaghetti pomodoro, aka spaghetti with tomato sauce. If it has garlic in it and is not just plain tomato sauce going straight from can to plate, then it’s pretty solid. It has the advantage over penne and ???? of being a real dish with precedence and potential.
4. An Assortment of Sides
For when there are no vegetarian mains, but most of the sides are vegetarian. I like to eat an assortment of little things, so I’m good with this option. Hopefully the sides are things like tater tots and cheesy cauliflower, and NOT plain rice and another, smaller garden salad.
3. Veggie Burger
Generally, the only way this can go wrong is if it’s got a black bean patty. Veggie burger science has surpassed the black bean. Get rid of the black bean.
2. Grilled Cheese or Mac and Cheese
Since these are accidentally vegetarian, it doesn’t occur to anyone to render them terrible by adding random zucchini. So, they’re going to be pretty reliably good, assuming you aren’t at a Denny’s.
1. An Assortment of Appetizers
More reviews and rankings:
A list ranking common vegetarian options at American restaurants.