Food trends move in cycles, but few have been as loud or as divisive as veganism. Over the past decades it’s gone from fringe to mainstream, pushed by environmental concerns, industrial farming criticisms, documentaries, influencers, and endless supermarket plant based alternatives.
But something’s happened in the last couple of years.
The momentum has seeming seemingly slowed.
Many people who tried going vegan have quietly slipped back into eating meat or dairy. Restaurants that went fully plant based have started putting meat & fish back on the menu. Increasingly, the conversation has shifted from ideology to practicality:
What can people actually sustain long-term? What really works?
At Bohémien, I get asked one question more than any other:
“Why don’t you offer vegan menus?”
Here’s the honest answer.
Why Bohémien doesn’t serve Vegan Food
It’s not political.
It’s not a rejection of the values behind veganism.
It’s practical, artistic, and economic.
- It’s not our craft.
I cook French influenced, seasonal food. Butter, Stocks from bones, reductions, sauces, pastry, dairy, eggs, these are the foundations of the cuisine I’ve spent my career learning. Vegan cuisine is a different discipline. Entirely valid, but not Bohémien. And pretending to be an expert at it would be dishonest. There are chefs who create extraordinary vegan food, but that’s their craft & not mine.
- We rely on depth of flavour built from animal products.
Even the most vegetable forward French cooking is anchored by things like chicken stock, butter, cream, fish fumet, lardons, gelatine, anchovy, and aged cheeses. Remove all of that and you’re making a fundamentally different cuisine.
- Cost versus reward
At events, every ticket counts. Every seat taken by a guest is worth the same to us regardless of what that guest eats. We have to deliver something genuinely special. Charging the same price for vegan dishes which often take more effort to achieve, in my opinion less depth, feels wrong. Not unethical, just misaligned with what we’re trying to do. I couldn’t justify and honestly look you as a paying customer in the eye and charge you the same price for a plant based menu as I would a menu including expensive meat, fish, & cheeses that I know costs significantly more.
I believe chefs should cook what they’re good at, not chase trends. There is a reason you don’t see certain “trendy” things on our food you will see at so many restaurants. For example, you won’t see edible flowers on any of our dishes (I could & still may dedicate an entire article on the many reasons why)
And I know I can cook seasonal British produce through a French lens, with fat, bones, dairy, and the full palette of flavour that comes with traditional technique.
Veganism, Ethical Eating & the Class Divide We Don’t Talk About
Growing up working class, veganism simply wasn’t something you ever saw. From my experience, you didn’t meet vegans unless they were from our standpoint middle or upper class, or someone who’d gone off to university and come back converted. Not because people didn’t care but because it simply wasn’t accessible.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Modern veganism and much of ethical eating are often lifestyle choices available mainly to people with money, time, and options.
If your food budget is tight, you buy whatever feeds your family.
Not pea-protein nuggets at £4.50.
Not cashew cheese.
Not jackfruit “ribs”
Yes, raw ingredients can be cheap but time isn’t. And most people today don’t have the luxury of long evenings cooking from scratch, especially in households where both parents work or where a single parent is holding everything together.
The same goes for organic labels and ethical certifications.
Organic, free-range, grass-fed. All of this is meaningful and important.
It leads to better farming, better welfare, better food. We serve organic food, we only serve free range meat & only use free range eggs. But it comes with a price tag.
And if, for example, a single mother on benefits can only afford the cheapest supermarket chicken for her family’s Sunday dinner, she should never be shamed for that. She shouldn’t be judged for not buying organic or free range. She shouldn’t be made to feel morally inferior because she’s feeding her kids within the only budget she has.
Food ethics mean nothing if they exclude the people with the least financial freedom.
Compassion for animals matters but equally so does compassion for humans.
This is why I’m honest about what I cook and why I cook it.
I respect the realities people live with, and I don’t pretend that moral purity in food is equally available to everyone.
For many, it isn’t.
And acknowledging that is the first step toward a food culture that’s actually fair.
The Issue With Vegan Imitation Meats
Here’s the contradiction at the heart of modern veganism:
Some people stop eating meat for ethical, health, or environmental reasons, then replace it with ultra processed, factory made imitation meat flown halfway across the world. Now not all vegan substitutes fall into this category, of course, but many of the widely available ones do.
Beyond the taste, it raises real questions:
• Is a plant-based burger with 27 ingredients truly better for the planet than a piece of local offal?
• How ethical is something that relies on monocropped soy or pea protein?
• Why replace something with fake versions instead of celebrating vegetables themselves?
It doesn’t add up.
The Alternative We Believe In: Nose-to-Tail Eating
If you want an ethical, sustainable approach to meat, nothing & I mean nothing, beats nose-to-tail.
It respects the life of the animal.
It reduces waste.
It lowers the environmental footprint dramatically.
It honours food cultures and cooking traditions.
Using liver, heart, cheeks, collars, trotters, bones, kidneys, fat, these are ingredients with history, purpose, and incredible flavour.
And they’re accessible ,affordable, deeply rooted in working class cooking from every culture in the world.
Cultural Veganism & Vegetarianism: When It’s a Cuisine, Not a Trend
There’s an important distinction that often gets lost in Western conversations about veganism.
Some cultures have been cooking vegetarian or vegan food for centuries & not as a trend, not as a diet, but as a fully realised culinary tradition.
India alone has entire regional cuisines built on vegetarianism:
Gujarati thalis, Tamil lentil stews, Punjabi paneer dishes, Kashmiri dum aloo, the temple cuisines of South India. all sophisticated, flavour-driven, deeply rooted in ritual, religion, and agriculture.
Large parts of East Asia have long histories of Buddhist vegetarian cooking.
Ethiopian cuisine revolves around lentils, pulses, and fasting days that generate extraordinary vegan dishes.
The Mediterranean is full of naturally plant-focused dishes long before “plant-based” became a marketing term.
These cultures don’t treat vegan or vegetarian food as a restriction.
They treat it as a complete cuisine.
A framework.
An identity.
And that’s where the contrast becomes clear.
Traditional French cuisine, the backbone of what I cook at Bohémien, isn’t built that way.
It leans on butter, stock, bones, charcuterie, cheese, fat, eggs, reductions, jus, confit.
You can’t simply remove those and expect the cuisine to stay the same.
It becomes something else entirely.
Meanwhile, cuisines that have always been vegetarian or vegan aren’t compromised by the absence of animal products, they’re enhanced by it.
They know how to create depth without dairy.
They know how to build richness without stock.
They’ve been doing it for centuries.
And frankly, If someone wants truly great vegan or vegetarian food, they’re far better off going to a cuisine built for it. Not asking French food to bend into shapes it was never meant to hold.
It’s a matter of cultural honesty.
A matter of respecting the integrity of each cuisine.
And a reminder that “vegan food” isn’t one thing, it’s thousands of dishes across the world that existed long before the trend.
Where Vegetarianism Fits Into Bohémien
Vegetarian food is a different conversation for us.
We offer vegetarian menus at many of our events because it aligns naturally with seasonal French cooking.
Vegetables, dairy, eggs, grains, herbs, this is the foundation of the cuisine we already practice. Every menu, regardless of vegetarian or not is built on the foundation of what fruits & vegetables are in season.
Vegetarian dishes can be some of our best: celeriac braised in brown butter, leeks vinaigrette, pumpkin baked with Comté, wild mushrooms, brassicas, all the things that truly belong to the landscape of Britain and France.
Vegetarian cooking feels authentic to our craft.
Vegan cooking doesn’t.
But again, it comes back to respect for the ingredient, for the animal, for the land, and for the people eating the food.
We’re not trying to win ideological arguments.
We’re just trying to cook honestly.
Our Conclusion: Cook With Respect, Eat With Context
These points aren’t meant to insult, it’s simply an observation.
We’re not anti-vegan.
We’re not pro-meat for the sake of it.
We’re pro-honesty.
None of this is meant as an insult or an attack on vegans or ethical eaters. People should eat in whichever way they want.
It’s simply an honest explanation of why we don’t cook vegan food, and a look at the parts of the conversation. Class, money, time, access, these often get overlooked when people talk about veganism or organic eating as the “morally superior” choice.
Eat meat if you like, but waste nothing.
Buy organic if you can — but never judge those who can’t.
Do what your budget, your ethics, your culture, and your taste allow.
At Bohémien, our approach is simple:
Respect the ingredient.
Respect the craft.
Respect the people eating the food.
And above everything else:
cook things that taste delicious.
Tom Chef & Owner, Bohémien
