Making Sure Your Meal is Actually Vegetarian in Latin America
It’s not easy, but it is possible.
Observe: a well-intentioned restaurant in Quito, Ecuador, providing vegetarian options! Look at that little green sticker!
But … but … but …
YOU GUYS, EVERY SINGLE “VEGETARIAN” SOUP IS MADE WITH CHICKEN STOCK!
THE LAST SOUP IS EVEN CALLED “CHICKEN SOUP WITH VEGETABLES.”
This illustrates two things:
As it is listed separately from the vegetables, Ecuadorians do in fact know that chicken is NOT a vegetable, and
YOU MUST NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER TRUST THE “VEGETARIAN” STICKER IN LATIN AMERICA!
Unfortunately, super authentic Latin food in the US is subject to the same issue: chicken stock Is very often included in “vegetarian” dishes because Latin countries do not tend to consider chicken stock to be meat. If you really do not want to eat chicken stock in your burrito, you always have to ask this question at Mexican and other Latin restaurants in the US.
Now What?!
Don’t panic. Menus like this actually provide insight that we might have missed otherwise - Americans and Ecuadorians (and in my experience, a lot of Latin Americans in general), do not agree on the meaning of “vegetarian.” Therefore, you need to be much more specific in order to make sure that your food meets your dietary requirements.
Spanish You Need to Know as a Veggie Person
For SOUP and RICE in particular, you should always ask if it’s made with chicken or meat broth:
“Esta hecho con caldo de pollo o caldo de carne?”
There are two pieces of this question that are important! First, you need to specify chicken and meat separately, because in Latin America, chicken isn’t meat - it’s chicken! Which is … pretty close to a vegetable. Second, broth is not considered meat, presumably because it is not the actual flesh of the animal (???), so you do have to use the word “caldo” instead of just asking whether there is chicken or meat in your food.
If you also don’t want fish in your meal, you can add:
“…o caldo de pescado o mariscos?”
You can of course start your sentence by saying that you are vegetarian or vegan, but in my personal experience, that is NOT sufficient to guarantee that your meal will actually be vegetarian. But it's really easy to remember this vocab. Note that “g” in these words is pronounced like an h in English.
“Soy vegetariano” (male speaker) / “Soy vegetariana” (female speaker)
“Soy vegano” / “Soy vegana”
I’ve never tried to say that I’m pescatarian - I’m not really sure If that’s a concept that exists in South America, or if it maps clearly to our concept of pescatarianism. Surely, if vegetarians eat chicken, so would pescatarians! So, my personal introduction goes like this:
“Soy vegetariana, pero yo como pescado y mariscos. Yo no como pollo, carne, o pulpo (octopus). Esta hecho con caldo de pollo o caldo de carne, o otras carnes?”
I know enough Spanish that I can just ask this now, but if you aren’t comfortable in Spanish, print out your version of “is this vegetarian” and show it to your server. I asked my friend to write my dietary restrictions in Chinese when I went to Beijing for a day, and it helped a lot! (I think!)
