When I left my old workplace my colleagues organized a good-bye meal together. Standard office job, with regular guys. We had a great relationship and they knew I was vegetarian for 5+ years at that point and never had any issue with it.
So they asked which restaurant I would like to go and I was stupid enough to let them choose.
We ended up in a specialized Brazilian meat restaurant, where the servers go around with absurdly large pieces of grilled/fryed meats and would carve a piece to the guests. If you are a meat lover you can have easily 10-15 types of meats in a couple of hours.
Those assholes had a huge grin on their faces all evening, as I could only eat the sides from the buffet and had to refuse all meals from the servers about 12 time that evening. It was a truly memorable night, we even got drunk and laughed our asses off on our way home.
So yeah, not just kids can be assholes.
We are still in contact till this day.
Yeah, I don't like to think that far into it because it fucking hurts my heart. I love meat. But I've got family and friends that are vegan and vegetarian of different stripes. I will invite them to my cookouts and have a whole ass kettle grill that has never had an animal product cooked on it. That's just for regular summer shit, not even celebrating them.
Jokes should punch up if they're going to punch someone. Hitting a vegetarian is fucked up. They ain't done shit to nobody.
Honestly, everyone just being a little gracious is all you really need.
I’m vegan and I have no issues going to a normal bbq place for someone else’s party(though I don’t know what this place would be like). I can eat corn and undressed salad for a meal, I’ll survive. If the party were for me, I’d probably feel like it was passive aggression or a weird test though.
Similarly, there will be non-vegan food when I introduce my husband to my family and celebrate our wedding in my home country with a potluck, because one of my sisters has celiac’s and the other IBS, which restricts her fiber intake. I would have been totally cool with exclusively mashed potatoes (skin off) for dinner and sorbet for dessert, but I don’t think many others would be, and there’s not much else that works for all of us.
Sure, I could tell them not to bring non-vegan food, but that’s not very gracious, and I want people to be comfortable. They’d probably agree and either eat ahead of time or leave earlier and eat on the way home, so it’s not like there’s a practical difference in meat consumption, and it’s a great way to make people feel less welcome.
To be fair the place had a great buffet with a large selection of sides and great cocktails, I ended up eating mac and cheese, curly fries and some salad. Even tried some grilled seasoned pineapple so it was at least memorable.
I mean, that's fucked up and hilarious. I'm a dirty omnivore and those places are no more appetizing to me. Those cuts at the all you can eat Brazilian places SUCK.
But surprisingly, when I want a predictable vegetable side while I'm traveling, I go to a steakhouse. Every other place seems to serve either microwaved bag veggies, fried bullshit, or something sad smothered in sauce. Go to a steakhouse and I can get a rare well seasoned aged filet and two steamed fresh vegetable sides plus a salad. The only reliable vegan places I've found are Indian, which isn't bad, but is often not really to my taste. Obviously I'm no vegan, but I think it's fair to say I love plant based foods even more as long as they're not fake meat, fake cheese, or overly spiced mush. In a meat centric region that's a hard palette to satisfy sometimes.
There are vegan and vegeterian-owned restaurants that are pretty good, but the omnis don't know about them until they are dragged there. And I get it...you don't really go looking for vegan or vegetarian food, specifically, when you're omni.
One place I like has this amazing house-made seitan pastrami that they use in a Reuben sandwich, and more recently a Reuben pizza. They also got this bomb mushroom quesadilla.
Same guy owns an adjacent vegan cafe/bakery/juice bar...has awesome cupcakes and this jalapeño cornbread that's just fucking amazing.
That's 15-20 different types of meat not in a few hours,ore like in 30 minutes. They're awesome restaurants if you're not a vegetarian, your coworkers are dicks.