Happy Cow: Are Bad Vegan Restaurants Bad for Veganism?

the purpose of this video is not to
complain that vegan restaurants in general are garbage and not to complain that the website happy cow is gone we're gonna repress the urge to say exactly those things in this video we recently had a bit of a round-the-world trip from China to Thailand from Thailand to France and what struck us and a lot of vegans feel this way or deal with this on the one hand there are a lot of really lousy really disappointing vegan restaurants at all price levels there are disappointing elite very very expensive vegan restaurants and they were disappointing you know cheap low-end vegan restaurants and juxtaposed with this is the happy cow website which for one thing forces you to give all vegan restaurants a minimum rating of two stars two stars out of five you can't give them one star you can't get them a zero stars so they're there forcing you to inflate it and also it just seems voluntarily the vast majority of people contributing reviews there's kind of review inflation you know I don't think it's uh I don't think it's a conspiracy of the restaurant owners to post positive reviews no I don't think so either I think it's just that people are so happy to see a vegan restaurant that they have lower standards than what they would infer right that's part of it and the website itself has rhetoric suggesting to you that you should support the vegan movement by giving positive reviews to these restaurants and I got a notice like that when I gave when I tried to give a zero star review to a restaurant was like oh no well you know you should give them encouragement because they're doing the best they can and they're supporting the future they want is the vegan future the vegan movement awful food we're just we're just or just mediocre just disappointing yeah because I mean again the disappointment thing it's very much relevant we're very much relative to the price all right yeah I mean you know if you're paying a certain level you know a certain amount of time and money or maybe way so disappointing compared to the ratings that were provided and like one of the reviews that were providing right places that we went to we're good and positive but then when we went there the happy calm happy cow really makes it worse in exactly that way that yeah you get all excited try this new place so I mean look real quick you know all of Thailand is overrated Thailand is the most overrated thing on the planet right now especially for vegans then the vegan demi-monde right like to start with Thailand is overrated full stop right in she'd never been to Thailand before I've been a talented million times I lived there I can still speak enough Thai to get by I guess you know you were last thing into Thai when you got back to China yeah yeah yeah that's the problems of study too many languages so with speaking Chinese every day that I want sound but anyway I got back into speaking Thai if I had time to brush up I could probably speak Thai pretty well but anyway time to take a course or hit the books but and when we flew there and I mean I did take you to at least a couple low-end vegan restaurants the investors that are cheap and buy Thai people for Thai people yeah we went to one that was very traditional Thai at least it would be right and I don't think you enjoyed the food no but it was a good experience you know yeah it's culturally interesting but no I don't think for you I don't think the food was enjoyable I'm not kind of narrated to the way no I mean I don't I don't know if you go as far to say the food was awful but you know you tolerated the food yeah I mean you know it was I'm you know this is also a difference between eating at a restaurant and eating at your cousin Morty's place right you're nice to your cousin more - he made this effort for you you know if it but if it's a restaurant it's a restaurant there were standards and expectations that apply you know name now also in Thailand I think we went to just one super high-end luxury vegan restaurant yes right so we only did one like that and again so the price was very very high and the environments was you know air-conditioned and gleaming and so on and I mean I would say the food was very disappointing yeah in that case I can't say the food is bad I can't say it's terrible or even you know but again it's relative to a very different standard right yeah at least I got to try taro fries that's interesting yeah yeah yeah yeah but yeah and also everything was organic there so that really drove up the price oh that's her or they didn't need it's an excuse to drive up the price right because I mean with vegan food the ingredients were talking about are all really cheap lettuce it's just not that expensive you know I mean look taro potatoes are not that expensive when you actually look at it I mean the the single most expensive ingredient in that meal was avocado avocado is a little bit expensive in Southeast Asia you know but like you know that's that's about it and yeah we do basically a pile of greasy mush on a fancy in a fancy bun oh it was colored with charcoal to be black yeah right so all right well my singer let's let's let's do France let's do France to France to me was on a whole nother level first of all we're where we were France there was basically no such thing as a cheap restaurant like the cheapest meal for two you're gonna get as like 40 euros that's like a cheap meal at a restaurant and then on happy cow we had these there were all these really positive glowing reviews and the food was the food was bad enough in these vegan restaurants that if my cousin Morty made it I wouldn't even probably I probably be like you know like thanks for trying Morty you know that's not suggesting not really that's not really how you cook lentils Morty yeah you know what I mean that's not really what I'd call lasagna Morty being like you try to be nice about it if your cousin made it for you but it's not your cousin making for you've taken the time and the money to sit down and do this and the food is you know tolerable but but so does it and again I people feel like the future the vegan movement is gonna be going on the internet and praising these restaurants and pretending pretending there's something not so look here's the other thing right I think one of the myths we live with is that if vegan food is good enough it's going to entice meteors or it's going to make the transition easier from eaters obviously there is some truth to that whether it's five percent true or ten percent sure where 50 percent role I mean it's it's never going to be convincing you're never gonna have a an ideological meet or sit down eat a vegan burger and say this vegan burger is so good I'm gonna throw my leather couch in the garbage that's it there's never gonna happen right obviously there are bunch of it but nevertheless it's true you're easing the transition for meat-eaters and it's a significant question how good are the substitutes how readily available the substitutes you know this is a question but it seems like you're you're really damaging the movement when you do the opposite if you set up these restaurants and they're expensive and the food is lousy and then meat eaters go to them meat eaters may look at the review and happy cow or some other site and they go to them and it's like I just paid 40 euros for pizza with no cheese and it's not even as good as getting pizza with no cheese at a normal meteorite on let alone pizza with cheese or something right I just paid 40 euros for this you know crap lentil dish or whatever it is you you managed to get which is not as good as even going to a normal Middle Eastern place like if we admit there's some truth to having good substitutes available helping the cause then presumably this is this is really harming the console yeah I would I would've thought there was any of the actual the dedicated vegan restaurants that we saw in France yeah well one positive if I can make a positive out of it is that going to the vegan restaurants in Thailand in France bring me really appreciate the vegan restaurants of Detroit yeah and they're really good in comparison it's right on the internet it gets reviewed as one of the ten best places to be vegan in the States and it's having a lot of good vegan restaurants yeah those vegan restaurants I think actually would help people feel more confident about the transition into it I don't feel that way about a lot of the places that we went to in France yeah yeah I mean it hurts mark remember the grocery stores in France were pretty good for for vegan options like vegan substitutes yeah the actual grocery stores is kind of the kind of a separate story I feel German I feel Germany is one of the best countries in the world to be vegan because of the grocery stores not because of the restaurants because of what's available to growers Jordan and now it's aware how it's available but look in terms of what inspired this video tonight we just got takeout from a new vegan restaurant here in China into Hong China and this reminds me of a pattern I've seen in Taiwan again again when I was living in Taiwan the people who run this restaurant are sincere or ideological vegans at least the owners they had believe me they had writing on the wall literal writing on the wall explaining veganism as an etiology and they have no eggs and no dairy it's not just vegetarian it's really vegan but the question you ask yourself is well hey these people their hearts are in the right place they're supporting the movement but are they really restaurant people or are they really food people you know I mean like you I when were going to places in Taiwan and typically it would be a middle-aged woman who had kids and then it couldn't get back into the workforce or just decided to retire you know woman in her 50s or something kids have already gone to college and she decides to set up a vegan restaurant because she believes in veganism or she believes in Buddhism or both either maybe your religious aspects you know in here in Asia there's so veganism and or Buddhism right but she she's someone with no background no experience running restaurants and no real interest in old fashioned cuisine is them so the results are very often mediocre too terrible you know they're they're disappointing we can leave it at that right so it's it's a real bind because you and I I mean like I think every serious vegan has thought about should I be in food services somewhere should I try to open a restaurant or a bakery or something but I'm self-critical enough to know if I'm gonna run a bakery I got to go to baking college even if it's just for six months or something you know I've got to take some courses you know I know I don't bring to this already a skill set to make that successful or just make it adequate I'd forget successful adequate you know what I mean it's tough yeah for some reason I still feel more confident that we could make yeah I do feel confident that we would make better food than many of the vegan restaurants we actually went to on this trip yeah well which was across such a strange cultural diversity of places here in Yan'an and in Thailand and in France and so on yeah okay so I mean look and what is what is the future of the vegan movement and you know it's hard I think a lot of cities I think what I'd like to see happen is people putting together charities to make vegan food more convenient at subway stations whether that's at something like a hamburger stand hot dogs vegan ham bursts and I was if he cannot understand or kiosk or whatever it is but I mean even if you have a vegan corner store with vegan potato chips and vegan chocolate bars like I know that I'm it's it's junk food in the truest sense of the word but you know at an airport or at a subway station or something I mean you know I almost feel like we need to have a drive for that kind of food as terrible as it may be and then on the other hand I mean a small number of people are trying to make a name for themselves or make a name for the movement or just live a lifestyle a lot of its lifestyle driven we had a long conversation with this woman in France who opened a vegan restaurant yeah she was really passionate about saying like if this is for the animals like this is something that I've been wanting to do where she just opened it up you know less than two years ago and she's itching to we oh yeah she's so that's where do you remember that I mean that's true I I also remember her saying that they see my memory that is totally muted because she also described her reasons for running that restaurant being she wanted to go to the beach every day she wanted have a cool place to hang out you know I mean look there were these lifestyle elements where it was like well are you running a restaurant or you on vacation yeah you know that that was what I was hearing but you are right she also did say that stuff about it being motivated by and for the animals yeah yeah yeah so yeah I mean you know you have mixed motives you have a kind of conflict of interest within why are these people doing this yeah and I guess I mean I guess the fundamental difference between the meat based restaurants and the vegan restaurants is that with most meat based restaurants the customer comes first they're making the food people want to eat they're making food to please the customers and with vegan restaurants there's this list of other things that come before the customer whether that's the kind of ideological purpose or these lifestyle concerns or what have you yeah that's a wrap vegan restaurants are pigeon at the cow is garbage and only making it worse