I wish restaurants understood that the reason to have a vegetarian dish on your menu even if you don't cater to vegetarians is so that people can bring their friends with them to your restaurant. You're not losing the smaller vegetarian population, you're losing the larger "people who have vegetarian friends or family members" population.

Like FFS just add the token house salad would ya? We understand the deal.

@ra6bit there's a lot of restaurants that you just can't take people with food allergies to, let alone vegetarians
@ra6bit Bunnies love to have Goi Chay with friends
@ra6bit Heck, sometimes the vegetarian option should be there for when one member of the party wants a lighter meal. Though that's more of an american problem than anything.
@ra6bit there's also the classic "you could just have not made this with meat and it'd be better than any of the actual vegetarian options"

@ra6bit in my understanding some restaurants aren't able to provide vegetarian meals, because they can't guarantee, that the meal won't come in contact with animal products during preparation.
Eg using a pan, which is also used for steak.

This raises a lot of other questions regarding hygiene, but I heard this reason several times.