Drop into our Isle of Wight bistro this summer and we’ll try to tempt you with a delicious array of dishes for meat-eaters and vegetarians. I promise, it’s a menu to make your mouth water.
But when, in 2022, we announced the opening of our bistro and I posted the menu on Facebook, the abuse I received — online and personally, with threats and foul-mouthed rants over the phone — left me in tears.
Incredibly, the people who heaped that hatred on me believe they’re the righteous, kind ones … because they’re vegans.
So when I read last week that a dozen protesters had barged into celebrity chef John Mountain’s restaurant Fyre in Perth following his announcement that vegans were banned — in response to a one-star review accusing him of “shortcomings as a chef” — memories of all the stress I endured came rushing back.
Apparently, a vegan activist named Tash Peterson, along with a dozen others, gatecrashed the restaurant with a loudspeaker, blaring sounds of pigs squealing in distress before being slaughtered.
Mountain was having none of it and dragged some of them out himself.
Like Mountain, I’m a pretty strong character, but the hostility I faced for my non-vegan menu nearly broke me when we opened the bistro next door to our restaurant, The Kitchen at London House in Ventnor, which has been running since 2016.
The aim was to create a continental flavour with French-style dishes, and the initial menu included sea bass, short rib of beef and confit duck cassoulet, with a goat’s cheese and fig tart as the vegetarian alternative. Many of our ingredients are locally sourced and organic wherever possible.
Within minutes of advertising it online, I got a message demanding to know whether there would be vegan choices, too. When I confirmed that these weren’t available, all hell broke loose. This is despite the fact that genuine demand for vegan food barely exists.
In the past 18 months, three vegan eateries on the Isle of Wight have been forced to close due to lack of business, a story echoed all over the country.
And only last month, Leeds-based Meatless Farm, which supplied vegan alternatives to the likes of Pret, Byron and Itsu, went into administration.
No matter. I believe activists won’t be satisfied until every dish on offer is completely vegan: no eggs, no dairy, no animal produce whatsoever.
The angry messages multiplied. I stood my ground, explaining that it wasn’t economically feasible to cater for every preference.
Someone accused me of “trying to play the victim” and I felt it was time to explain my stance.
I posted a statement on our Facebook page, warning that I was not going to bow down to bullies on social media. “Please, vegans,” I said, “it is not a given that we should adapt our menu to suit your preference. If you want vegan food, go to a vegan restaurant.”
That seemed fair and reasonable to me. I pointed out that if I went to a vegan establishment and asked for a beef steak, I wouldn’t get one — and quite right, too, because I’d be in the wrong place.
I also explained that sometimes people call and ask whether we can cater for a specific food allergy. We always do our best but, if it’s not possible, I’ll say so . . . and I’ve never received abuse for it. People with medical dietary requirements are invariably understanding.
Vegans, I wrote, have chosen their own lifestyle. “It’s not a medical condition that you’ve been forced to endure through no fault of your own. Your choice does not fit with our style of cooking. We respect your choice and expect you to respect ours.”
I also explained that we used to offer vegan options but that these had also attracted hostility from the holier-than-thou brigade.
Several years ago, our deli did sell plant-based takeaways, including scones with vegan clotted cream and jam, and vegan bacon in BLT sandwiches. But I got fed up with vegan customers making loud and unpleasant remarks about the meat on sale.
One woman looked into the chiller cabinet and announced: “Eurggh! Dead animals!”
Another was so rude to one of my staff that I had to ask her to leave. My employees work hard and I won’t let them be subjected to nasty comments. After that, I withdrew all our vegan options.
I ended my online statement with a plea: “We are an extremely hard-working, passionate team of people, who work very hard on a daily basis to produce good, honest, quality food and service to our customers. We do not deserve this criticism or abuse.”
Far from calming the situation, this only seemed to inflame it. The online controversy grew so heated that it was reported in the national media — which added still more fuel to the flames.
Fake reviews sprang up like mushrooms on Google and Tripadvisor, from people who claimed to be disappointed diners.
“Terrible service,” said one. “Awful food, horrible atmosphere, will never go here again,” claimed a second. “Avoid!” screamed another.
All of them left one-star reviews. And none of them had ever been near the bistro, as far as I could see. Every bad review was a poisonous lie — and it threatened to do real damage to my business.
Our rating on Google, previously a solid four-and-a-half out of five, or 90 per cent, tumbled to just one-and-a-half. I contacted Google’s customer relations and it deleted a couple of reviews, but it didn’t seem very interested.
The Tripadvisor team was much more pro-active. It froze my account for a month, so that no one could leave reviews while it investigated the problem, and then deleted all the fake ones.
However, none of that stopped the abusive phone calls. One woman screamed down the line, calling me a “murdering b****”. Seeing how upset I was, my son stepped in to field the calls.
And then something marvellous started to happen. My regular customers had always been supportive, but now people I’d never met began sending unsolicited messages of solidarity.
Many made bookings, to show their support. They went out of their way to tell us how much they’d enjoyed the food and urged us not to give in to the bullies.
Some of the messages came from as far afield as Texas — where a cattle rancher emailed to say his livelihood depended on restaurants standing up to vegans.
I wrote back to ask how on earth he’d come to hear about a bistro on the Isle of Wight. “You were on Fox News,” he said.
A chef from Scotland told me he wished his employers would copy our resolve. “I hate cooking for vegans,” he said. “Without eggs and butter, you end up producing tasteless mush.”
Some of the most surprising support came from vegetarians. Many told me how hard it is to even find veggie, rather than vegan, options now. “I love cheese,” one said. “I don’t eat meat or fish — but why should that mean I have to be lumped in with the vegans? It’s making me feel invisible.”
That’s a real problem for small restaurants such as mine. We can’t tailor our dishes to every kind of diner because that would mean a menu with more pages than a paperback. I don’t blame chefs who decide that the veggies will have to be treated as vegans, but it isn’t what I do.
I don’t blame John Mountain for banning vegans from his restaurant in Australia either.
My approach is different: If a customer books and lets us know that one of the party is vegan, of course we’ll go out of our way to provide a suitable meal. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be going on the menu, and we can’t do it without advance warning.
When vegans started sending abuse to Mr Mountain, the chef doubled down.
“Phone the police and the ambulance, have them on stand-by, because if they try pulling a stunt with me, good luck,” he warned.
He clearly meant it, judging by events at his restaurant last week. I certainly don’t condone that.
It might be the way they deal with vegans in Australia but we’re a little less confrontational on the Isle of Wight.