Vegetarian Food in Louisville (part 1)

I eat vegetarian food about 95% of the time. When I do eat meat I try very hard to make sure it comes from local farms and farmers who engage in sustainable agricultural practices. That makes me a flexitarian. I also love eating out. That makes me poor but that's a subject for a different day. Louisville of course has a great dining scene including some really wonderful vegetarian options. I thought I'd highlight a few vegetarian meal favorites for other flexitarians and vegetarians.

1. Zen Garden, to my knowledge, is Louisville's only completely vegetarian restaurant. The pan-Asian menu offers many vegetable main dishes as well as dishes built around tofu or meat substitutes. For my money the best meal at Zen Garden begins with an appetizer of steamed dumplings followed by orange tofu. This lightly fried tofu dish is accentuated with a nice vegetable mix and topped with an amazing citrus sauce.

2. The Black Bean Burger at Third Avenue Cafe is the best non-meat burger I've ever had. It's got a great texture, spicy but not overly so flavor and it's served on amazing focaccia bread. Everything else I've tried at Third Avenue has been equally delicious. I've never had really bad service at Third Avenue but I've never had really good service there either. The kindest and best way I could describe the service would be to call it laid back. The food is so good though I don't really care about the service, and that's really saying something for me.

3. El Mundo has the most fantastic veggie burrito you're ever going to taste and really outstanding guacamole (I say that as a person who doesn't even like guacamole but craves El Mundo's guac on a regular basis). The atmosphere is beyond festive and the staff is insanely nice and friendly.

4. I very much enjoy grilled portobello sandwiches. My two favorite versions of this sandwich come from City Cafe and the Deli at Douglass Loop. I've heard that Meridian Cafe has an excellent one as well but I've yet to try it.

5. The Irish Rover is one of my favorite places on the planet. It's a neighborhood pub that feels like home. So naturally I'm biased to thinking everything they serve is wonderful. I'll also confess that I eat fish or meat most of the time I visit the Rover. That being said here are two really wonderful vegetarian options that I love. The first is the Farmers Plate which is "a marinated, grilled portabella mushroom cap stacked on grilled zucchini, squash, red peppers and eggplant, and sauced with a roasted red pepper vinaigrette." It's light and lovely. The second is the "grown up's grilled cheese" known as Welsh Rabbit. Cheddar and mustard on the Rover's dreamy sourdough bread. It's heavenly on a cool, rainy afternoon.

These great vegetarian meals being praised I'd like to encourage the fine dining restaurants in Louisville to increase both the quantity and the creativity of their vegetarian options. As evidenced by this list there are tons of great sandwiches, burritos and other casual food staples to be found in Louisville but I find vegetarian options at more upscale restaurants to be somewhat lacking. In my experience these restaurants tend to have one and only one vegetarian entrée on the dinner menu. That entrée tends to consist of a rather heavy pasta dish or a mixed vegetable plate. Heavy pasta dishes can be awesome and mixed vegetable plates are wonderful but there is more to vegetarian cuisine. I promise you two things about vegetarian food: 1) It does not have to be boring and 2) a vegetarian meal does not necessarily need lots of cheese and butter to make it taste good.

It would probably be fair to label Louisville a "meat and potatoes" kind of town but there is an ever rising population of vegetarians and flexitarians who enjoy a fine meal out just as much as the meat eaters. Speaking for myself, someone who eats out regularly including at expensive restaurants, I'll say that I'm just waiting to give my money and frequent patronage to the fine dining restaurant that steps up to the plate and starts including more innovative and interesting vegetarian options on their menu. I've had two occasions this past month that I wanted to celebrate with a nice dinner but ended up being disappointed by menus that offered 6 different kinds of meat slabs prepared 12 different ways and the only vegetarian offering was pasta and spring vegetables (in September and October) smothered in cheese.

If there are veggie treasures that I'm missing please do email or comment to share them with me. I'd very much appreciate it.

Update: In her comment Brittany reminded me that I had left a Ramsi's meal off my list. Ramsi's has a real wealth of vegetarian options. My favorite? 1001 Arabian Lentils. It's a massive serving of cumin and cinnamon spiced lentils and rice. It's one of my favorite meals period.