I'll be vegan when hell freezes over but I think what you say means you just don't have experience with a food culture where most dishes are plant based, like the Mediterrannean or the Indian cuisine.

I grew up in a Mediterrannean country. If you think about it, that's the one region in the entire world that has so many different nations famous for their cuisines: Spain, Italy, Greece, France, Morocco, Tunisia ... and all of them are 80% technically vegetarian or vegan. Think of Italian cuisine with all its pasta with tomato sauce and olive oil, for example, or the Greek cuisine with all its sea food, the world-famous French cheeses, Moroccan pilafs, etc.

It's funny in a way but most of those are the cuisines of traditionally piss poor people (in Italy, for example, you eat best in the -still- poor South). They say that "need is the mother of invention" and I guess if you can't rely on having steak and fries for breakfast, lunch and dinner, then you really need to get creative if you want to have some pleasure with your food.

It's a real tragedy that in the West being vegan has more or less become synonymous with fake burgers and milk substitutes. There's so many things you can eat that are vegan, or vegetarian, that aren't "fake" anything and don't "substitute" anything, they're just delicious foods in their own right. But then, there are so many people who don't even know how to cook steak and fries to begin with, let alone know how to make a good meal out of some vegetables...

I don’t think you’ve had the right vegan food. Some is disgusting, just like some meat-based foods are (fermented shark?). Some can be made really well. I’m not a vegan but I’ve noticed what’s missing in it a lot of them is umami - savoriness. That’s an easy fix: soy sauce, kombu, tomatoes (paste especially), certain mushrooms, even pure MSG. Things with a lot of glutamate go a long way to making most dishes better, non-vegan ones included.

Mushrooms is the only thing on that list that even comes close and I admit they are delicious.

I think it’s a matter of judicious use. I use a lot of tamari/soy sauce when I cook, but not enough that the food tastes overly of it. It’s the savoriness I want, not the actual flavor. Same with tomato paste - roast it in the oven so it has some color and then mix it in with things like soups. They won’t taste like tomato paste (unless you go overboard with it) but they will have a fuller mouthfeel and feel more satisfying.

When I make stock at home from vegetable trimmings, I put mushrooms and kombu in. In Japanese cooking those two things make a dashi, which is a base stock for a lot of dishes, but even adding them to regular stocks (or if I’m cooking rice or quinoa or something) by tying a sheet of seaweed around some mushrooms and then pulling it out when the cooking is done, it imparts a lot of glutamate but not an overly seaweed-y flavor. I don’t eat the seaweed or the mushrooms usually (dried shiitakes have a texture I don’t like), I use them only to infuse things.

Improving cultivation of more types of mushroom would do a lot.

The range of tastes in mushrooms varies a lot more than most people realise - it drives me crazy how many English words are used for the same mushroom (portobello, white, brown, chestnut, crimini, champignon all refer to agaricus bisporus), and how few mushroom varieties most people have tasted.

Especially as A.bisporus is one of the most boring mushrooms in existence.

I am an omnivore, but I noticed that mushrooms can often satisfy my craving for meat.

>Vegan food is not delicious.

As in, there exists no delicious food that doesn't contain animal products?

All of the cultures that have long food histories mostly not based around meat must be miserable? Nobody could possibly enjoy vegetable pad thai or chana masala? French fries?

Indian food is delicious because everything is rich in dairy. I honestly have never had a pad thai without meat. French fries are a compliment to something, I can rarely eat them by themselves.

Pad Thai is delicious with shrimps and also with Tofu. In my experience it's not the meat that adds most of the flavor.

Shrimp is meat ...

Shrimp is considered seafood so in terms of diet would be considered pescatarian.

I also said tofu which tastes great and is neither seafood or meat.

For the purposes of a discussion about being a vegan ... it's not on the menu.

Tofu it is, then.

Tofu is not delicious.

This thread is about vegans…

No it's bullshit.

That is one opinion. Mine is that meat is gross and that vegan food is delicious.

With meat eaters it’s a superset. We’re not missing out on anything.

Well, the intersection of vegan food with meat is the empty set. But I get what you mean if you mean "vegan" food, the stuff that is trying to emulate the taste of meat, albeit poorly. But fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, carbs, they're great.