I love the idea of Meatless Mondays: to eat less meat, have one day of the week devoted to meatless meals. It makes it easy to plan for eating less meat, helps home cooks learn new vegetarian dishes, and even makes it easier to eat less meat during the rest of the week. There are lots of reasons to eat less meat. Not only is it healthier, but raising meat on farms has a slew of negative environmental impacts, from polluted runoff to methane emissions that contribute to climate change.
So I understand why folks are excited that Mario Batali is instituting Meatless Mondays at all of his restaurants – but I’m extremely skeptical of the way he’s doing it:
So how’s Mario going to do it? Every Monday every one of his 14 restaurants will serve at least two vegetarian options, whether entrees or pastas or pizzas. [...] With this simple gesture, Mario will send a powerful message to other chefs and restauranteurs that we can all start the week right by eating our veggies.
Two vegetarian options? One day a week? That’s hardly a radical statement for a chef who claims he’s “a big believer in the Meatless Mondays movement.” If that means that most of his restaurants don’t have at least two vegetarian options on other days of the week, that’s awfully disappointing to me. Plenty of restaurants – even ones that don’t claim an environmentally friendly focus – have a whole section of the menu that’s vegetarian. The Meatless Mondays movement is aimed at educating the home cook. Restaurants should be able to do better.
Since I’m a vegetarian, I have to be selective about what restaurants I go to, and unless I’m with meat-eating friends, a place with only two veggie options doesn’t usually make the cut. And I know plenty of meat-eaters who like to eat meatless dishes on a regular basis.
So what is Mario Batali really trying to do? Is there some reason he won’t make a stronger stance on providing meatless options? Forget Meatless Mondays – I’d like to see every restaurant have meatless options every day. That would be a real “powerful message”!
What do you think? Has Batali gone far enough? Or is this more of a publicity stunt than a substantive change?
2 Comments
I whole-heartedly agree with this. Amanda and I are omnivores, but we are pretty consistent with meatless Mondays and have been for quite some time now. I tend to think Batali is an okay guy, for the most part, but this definitely feels like riding the trend to me. Two dishes is such a minimal effort – it doesn’t impress, it only serves to point out how few vegetarian options are out there in the first place (at least in Batali’s domain).
I’d take it one further than having him offer meatless options every day. If Batali really wanted to get behind the idea of meatless Mondays, he would have NO meat options on Mondays. Now that would actually be something worthy of some media. Of course, I won’t be holding my breath.
Liam, I think it would be awesome for a restaurant to go all-meatless for Meatless Mondays. But imagine the outrage of their meat-eating customers! If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being vegetarian, it’s that carnivores get incensed when someone tries to “take away” their meat. (As I recall, there were a number of comments along those lines when I saw this story on Facebook, even without Batali going all meatless.) I’d love to see this happen, but I agree, Batali isn’t likely to be the one to do it.