Living Meat-Free in The Midwest
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – It started with an article in the New York Times. A reporter for the paper who is stationed here in Kansas City happens to be a vegetarian, and he says eating can be a chore in the Midwest if meat isn’t part of your diet.
In his article he explains there are few options for vegetarians and occasionally a lack of knowledge in restaurants about what is and isn’t vegetarian.
This created a lot of backlash from Midwesterners, so FOX 4 set out to find out how difficult can it be to be a vegetarian here?
Sizzling meat, sliced and doused with tangy barbecue sauce is Kansas City’s thing, right? Well, not for everyone.
“We hear it every day. Oh thank you so much for being here, you know, it’s an oasis,” said Heidi Vanpelt-Belle, the owner of “Füd” in Kansas City.
“The Midwest needs it because there are a lot of people who want to eat food without a lot of animal products, and there’s a huge market for it,” Vanpelt-Belle explained.
Vanpelt-Belle said she’s been vegan for 18 years, and after living on the West Coast, coming to the Midwest was difficult for her lifestyle. She said while restaurants claim to offer vegetarian dishes, they’re either limited or not vegetarian at all.
“They’ll call it vegetarian, but it’s not truly vegetarian because they’ll lace it with animal broth,” she said.
It’s something the New York Times reporter says he found too, resulting in a diet of a lot of bread and water.
The corporate chef for McCoy’s, The Foundry, and Westport Beer Kitchen, which serve herbivores and omnivores alike, says he’s aware of those issues, and cooks accordingly.
“Everybody likes to go out to eat, so we try to take care of everybody the best we can,” Michael Peterson said.
He says each restaurant has six to ten meat-free dishes, some are even vegan, with no animal products such as cheese or milk.
He says catering to all tastes is a necessity to keep customers happy even though sizzling slabs of meat doused in sauce are almost synonymous with the name Kansas City.
The reporter for the New York Times makes it clear he enjoys the Midwest, he’s just found it more difficult to be “picky” here than in New York.
