I agree. I am not actually vegan, as I occasionally eat meat (love the taste still), but I try to reduce meat and dairy as much as possible.

Kenji of SeriousEats does a vegan-month every year and claims that he enjoys it because he focuses on dishes that taste exciting, but happen to be vegan.

A particular favorite of mine is this Mapo Dofu that he started out making with meat but migrated to silken tofu https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/02/vegan-food-mapo-tofu-veg...