Vegetarian in a South American restaurant

There is a particular face a vegetarian makes when a group announces it has booked a South American restaurant. It is the face of somebody calculating how much bread they will be eating. The reputation is charcoal, beef and more beef, and it is not an unfair reputation, because that is what the marketing has been for thirty years.

It is, however, a poor description of what South America actually eats. This is a short account of why, followed by exactly what is on the vegetarian part of our list and the three questions worth asking before you order.

The continent's larder is mostly plants

Almost everything the rest of the world eats from the Americas is a plant. Potatoes, tomatoes, maize, peppers, squash, beans, peanuts, avocado, cacao, vanilla, quinoa and cassava all come from there, and several of them reorganised the diet of entire other continents when they arrived.

Day to day cooking in Brazil, Peru and Argentina reflects that far more than the export version does. Rice and beans are the actual national dish of Brazil in the sense that they are what most people eat most days. Cassava turns up boiled, fried, dried into farofa and ground into flour. Palm heart is ordinary rather than exotic.

So the honest position is that the grill is the loud part of the cuisine rather than the whole of it. A menu that leans on charcoal is making a choice about what to show off, not reporting what the continent lives on.

What is actually on the list here

There is a vegetarian section, and it is not three sad items. At lunch it runs to nine: a vegetarian omelette, two salads, yakisoba, gnocchi de queijo, a beetroot risotto, a veggie pizza, a vegetarian burger and a vegetable tortilla. At dinner it is six, the same core minus the pizza, the omelette and the tortilla, which are daytime things.

Beside that there are sides that are dishes in their own right if you order two or three. Pimentos de padron, cassava fries, grilled broccoli, steamed rice, and roasted pineapple with blue cheese, which is the one people do not expect and then talk about afterwards.

One honest correction to something you may assume: the salad section is not a vegetarian section. Four salads, and two of them carry duck and chicken. Read that part of the menu rather than skimming it.

The three questions worth asking

First, vegetarian is not vegan, and our list does not mark vegan anywhere. Several of the vegetarian dishes are built on cheese, the gnocchi and that pineapple most obviously. If you are vegan, ask rather than guess, and ask at the point of booking rather than at the table.

Second, the grill. A charcoal oven is a shared surface, and a kitchen running meat and vegetables through the same heat is normal practice everywhere. If that matters to you, say so and the kitchen will work around it. Most restaurants will not raise this with you unprompted, which is why it is on this page.

Third, ask what is good tonight rather than what is vegetarian. The floor team knows which of the vegetarian dishes the kitchen is proud of this week, and that is a better filter than a symbol on a page.

During the day it is a different picture again

The daytime list is where the vegetarian options are widest, because eggs, bowls and salads are naturally on that side of the day. The brunch section carries six egg dishes, yoghurt bowls with granola or fruit, and smoothies, and almost none of that requires any negotiation.

If you are the vegetarian in a group that wants to try this restaurant, the daytime visit is genuinely the easier introduction. You will not spend the meal cross referencing.

What we are not going to claim

We are not going to tell you this is a vegetarian restaurant, because it is not, and a kitchen that runs a charcoal oven and a sushi counter is never going to be. If you want a place where the whole menu is yours, there are excellent ones in this city and you should go to them.

What we will say is that the vegetarian section here was written by somebody who cooks rather than assembled to fill a gap, that it is nine dishes rather than a gesture, and that nobody at this table has to eat bread. If you come and find that untrue on the night, tell the floor team, because that is a failure worth hearing about rather than a difference of opinion.