Chefs should know better

I was lazing about on the sofa this past Saturday, waiting for the “blizzard” to arrive and looking for something to watch on TV. Scrolling through my DVR guide, I saw that an episode of Simply Ming was about to start and that its theme was Tofu and Parsley. Ming made a green goddess dressing using tofu, which sounded great. But it wasn’t vegetarian, because he used fish sauce in it. He layered it in a salad that included chicken and bacon. But then he mentioned that you could just leave out the meat and add more veggies to make it vegetarian. Uh, no, I thought, because you put fish sauce in the dressing! I was pretty surprised, but I gave him in the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe he just forgot to mention that you’d need to leave out the fish sauce, too.

Later in the episode, Ken Oringer—a chef and owner of several Boston restaurants—joined Ming to make a dish of his own with tofu and parsley. He made a Malaysian Curry Noodle Hot Pot, which also included fish sauce. And then he mentioned what a great vegetarian dish it was! I was pretty shocked that two noted chefs would imply or outright state that a dish was vegetarian when it contained fish sauce. Surely they’d know better than that!

Of course, this made me think that I’d be leery to eat in their restaurants, because how could I trust any description of something as vegetarian if they don’t think a little fish sauce makes a difference? I guess it just goes to show that you can never be too careful and that even chefs who should know better sometimes just don’t “get it.” So it’s always best to double-check and ask how something is prepared—Does this soup have chicken stock in it? Does the curry have fish sauce in it? Are there bacon bits on this salad?

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