A vegetarian celebration
Acclaimed food writer to be fêted Friday with meat-free dinner at Beckta
Three years ago, award-winning U.S. food writer Karen Page gave up eating meat. To her surprise, she hasn’t wavered.
Vegetarianism was supposed to be an experiment, part of her research for her last book, The Vegetarian Flavor Bible, the 2014 followup to her acclaimed chef ’s compendium The Flavor Bible. But Page and her partner, photographer Andrew Dornenburg, remain committed to meat-free eating, at home and at the finest restaurants.
The couple will be in Ottawa this Friday at Beckta Dining & Wine, for a book signing/cocktail party followed by a four-course vegetarian dinner with wine pairings. There are 28 spots for that event, which will also include a discussion of vegetarian and veganism at restaurants.
Below, Page shares insights into her conversion to vegetarianism and today’s rise in meat-free eating.
Why did you and Andrew give up meat?
We both had an eye-opening experience when we lost four parents, all to cancer. We sort of ate our way through our 20s, 30s and 40s and we hit this new stage in our life where we realized maybe we’re not going to live forever.
We started reading the headlines more closely and seeing the correlation between the overconsumption of animal proteins and high incidence of cancer, heart disease, stroke and other chronic illnesses. We did the math and started thinking maybe we should start eating a little differently.
We started eating vegetarian in May of 2012. As foodies, as professional food writers, we never expected we would do it beyond the publication of The Vegetarian Flavor Bible. It was meant to be an experiment that we might do while we worked on a vegetarian book that we thought might lead us in the right direction, maybe toward a more healthful diet.
Our chef friends keep asking us, “Oh, are you eating meat again?” And we just sort of scratch our heads and say no. We’re vegan at home actually, but when we eat out, we’re vegetarian.
How are vegetarianism and fine dining intersecting these days?
We’ve had the pleasure of eating at some of the best restaurants all across North America and it’s amazing how many of them proactively offer vegetarian and vegan tasting menus or vegetarian and vegan dishes on their menus. We’re not talking about brown rice and sprouts, we’re talking about some of the most elegant, delicious menu items you could ever imagine.
On one hand, customers are demanding it. The smartest chefs realize it’s not just for his vegetarian and vegan customers but it’s also for the guests of their important customers. There needs to be something on the menu or they’ll choose another restaurant.
On the flip side, chefs are realizing the fact that vegetables, herbs, spices, that’s really the heart and soul of the flavour profile of any dish. If you’re looking to maximize flavour, you’re really looking to maximize what you’re doing with vegetables and your herbs and spices. I think that realization is something that’s driving vegetables to the centre of the plate in many restaurants as chefs are celebrating vegetables in a whole new way.
Even mainstream restaurants, like Blue Hill or Eleven Madison Park in New York City, they’re saying they’ve shifted. It’s not that slab of meat in the middle of the plate any more. They’re really shifting to celebrating more vegetables, legumes and grains. That comprises as much as 80 per cent of what they serve.
That’s a significant shift, and that’s really borne out by the numbers that show that for the last seven or eight years in the United States, the per capita consumption of meat has fallen every single year. That’s something that’s predicted to continue into the foreseeable future.
In the U.S., 53 per cent of the population is either vegetarian, vegan or looking to reduce their meat consumption. So it is a majority at this point.
I think the U.K., is even ahead of the U.S. Vegetarians and vegans are closer to 12 per cent there. In the U.S., vegetarians and vegans are closer to seven per cent. In Canada, the numbers I’ve seen are hovering around five per cent, perhaps.
Everything interrelates and I think it all really ties together. It’s flavour. It’s health. It’s new awareness of consumers, health, environment, ethics.
What’s one big realization that made vegetarian eating easier for you?
The light bulb that went off for us was why the heck don’t people think more often about making sauces with vegetables, not just tomatoes? You can take vegetables like cauliflower or broccoli or a whole host of other ones and turn them into really delicious sauces.
That’s a simple kind of trick you can learn in The Vegetarian Flavour Bible. That’s something that we were really happy to learn in the research of the book.