Vegetarianism is considered near to veganism but still very far in India.
Literally pure vegetarian food is vegan food i.e. food made of vegetation or from the plant source. Probably word "vegan" would be needed to coined when animal sourced food like dairy products included in vegetarian food. I am not much aware what vegetarian food is in most of the countries but unluckily in my country, India vegetarian food has become a joke and dairy products have become an integral part of so-called "Pure Vegetarian" food.
Today I went to dine out with the family in a newly opened pure veg Punjabi restaurant. I was knowing that it would be difficult to find some vegan dishes among lots of pure vegetarian dishes but, I just want to see how their vegan dishes are?
As per my expectation menu was full of paneer (Indian cottage cheese) dishes because in India so-called vegetarian people are obsessed with paneer. I can say 99% vegetarian's dine-out do not complete without any paneer dish.
If any dish does not have paneer then there is a chance that it might contain curd, butter or ghee. I just overlooked the menu and ordered a pre-decided dish "Chana Masala", plain Nan(oven-baked flatbread) and roasted papad for that I am sure it does not contain any dairy product. But still, I did not want to take any chance so I confirmed before order that there should not be added any dairy product in it.
My wife and children are not vegan but we only order vegan food whenever go for dine-out.
The ambient of this newly opened restaurant was traditionally Punjabi but waiters are not well dressed and wearing casual instead of any particular uniform.
There were some nice 'Punjabi idioms with their literal meaning and their use' framed on the wall. Also there was nice Punjabi painting.
There are limited choices for vegans in such "Pure Vegetarian" restaurant but overall we enjoyed our food.
This issue never came to my mind because maybe I haven't met a single person who can classify themselves as a strict vegetarian or 'vegan', but after reading this post i can surely conclude that in india dairy products are always coined for "Pure Vegetarian" and most preferred veg dishes are "Paneer Recipes" in almost all of the restaurants. As dairy products , eggs, honey, etc. are taken from living creatures, they are classified as vegetarian but they are far to be considered as "pure-veg" recipe.
That's too bad. Here in Cambodia, we love one Punjabi restaurant in Siem Reap and it's amazing. Though they have some dishes with paneer too, most dishes are vegan and taste amazing. So sad to hear about the dairy obsession as Indian flavors are ideal for vegans. Though I have never been to India, I base a lot of my cooking on the Indian recipes and flavors. So yum. I hope we can make it to India next year. Have a beautiful day.
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in Kerala, you dont usually get paneer dishes unless you speicifically mention it. Here we have only a few veg restaurants and that too run by the Saravana bhavan team but most people eat steamed foods and lentil curry preparations for breakfast which is vegan
You are right. I have visited Kerala and noticed that most of the vegetarian dishes there are vegan.
you can include this for restaurant reviews under the @tasteem I read a few articles under it
Thanks for your suggestion.
FYI, nan is usually not vegan in India. I'm surprised, how the staff there confirmed it to be vegan. Mostly these people don't know a thing about veganism. You should have interacted with the head-chef.
Oh!! then It is a really risky affair to have food in such restaurants. You are right that these people don't know anything about veganism and can't even think that any person can strictly refuse any content of dairy products in their vegetarian food. Will take care for sure in future.