Vegetarian hell

You might be getting the impression that I spend my entire life in a pub, but nothing could be further from the truth.

I just so happened to be in one recently and was in need of sustenance after a long day in the proverbial office.

What, I asked myself, were going to be the vegetarian options in this salubrious establishment? Surely here, in the heart of a posh bit of London, we were going to find a feast of fruits, flowers, beans, nuts and vegetables from around the world, to satisfy the appetites of a thousand bright young things hell bent on changing the world. Here, if  anywhere, would I find a culinary delight for my new-fangled dietary fastidiousness.

Mushroom dumplings! Wow! Sounds good. In a beetroot sauce, with turnip tops (??). OK let's go for it. The waitress agrees it's delicious but diplomatically suggests a side. Perhaps the cauliflower cheese, yes that would be the best accompaniment. Hmm.

And the beluga lentils! With pomegranate! And other things to make it doubly delicious! Yum - can't wait and now feverishly hungry.

And then it arrived.

The dumplings were delicious, all 6 of them. But they looked like Hula hoops, with a combined mass of maybe 5 grams, lying on a thin bed of lawn trimmings, with a side pot of beetroot water. Clearly designed to be eaten by an anorexic dragonfly.

The lentil thing was equally tasty but in need of an electron microscope to identify it's exact location on the great Kalahari desert of an otherwise empty plate.

Come on guys, help me out here. I'm trying to do the right thing by eating less meat - none in fact - and in the process both purify the temple that is my body and do my bit to stop the imminent destruction of our dear planet's fragile environment.

But you ain't making it easy for me. I weigh 95 kg and work hard all day - I need to eat, not peck.

My 18 year old son went for the chicken breast on a bed of a thick bean and vegetable sauce, and announced towards the end that it was not only delicious but so gargantuan in portion size, he was struggling to finish it.