I recently watched an episode of the Netflix Series “Master of None” that hit me hard. Many parts of the show dig deep into how humans think and feel, but the part that related to me the most was shockingly trivial.
In the episode, Dev and Rachel fly to Nashville on their first date. When they eat dinner, Rachel reveals that she is a vegetarian, a foreigner in the southern city of Nashville and a stranger to Dev’s love of white barbecue sauce. At the restaurant, she tells Dev that she will be fine at the restaurant – she can just order sides!
Her plate includes one piece of cornbread, one banana and a bowl of pickles. Everything else must have been cooked in animal fat or dressed in meat.
Dev asks her if she will have enough, and Rachel says she will be fine.
I have never looked at an element of entertainment like this episode and related to it more. That small glimpse of being a vegetarian in the south in that episode is what I have experienced my entire dietary life. I have studied a lot of literature that hits home, but sadly, that literature may not be as accurate as this one-minute restaurant scene. I will order all sides, people will ask me if I will have enough to eat and I answer lots of questions about being a vegetarian. It seems normal to me until I see a scene like this snippet from “Master of None” because I have never eaten meat. I have never known anything but ordering all sides in a traditionally Southern restaurant.
When I went to Nashville myself this summer, my plate was not as bare as Rachel’s. I think I got mac-and-cheese and a side salad because we went to a chicken place. There was no better option, and I feel bad searching for a place that has more options. That is the feeling I most associate with this scene – the embarrassment of not successfully finding meals. It is not a strong, traditional sense of embarrassment, but a more complex form that is only found when one has a strict dietary regiment. I have had plenty of experience with this feeling from trips with my youth group, meals in my university cafeteria and cookouts where my mom first taught me about coleslaw sandwiches. There is no clear reason for me to be embarrassed about settling for a salad or a bag of chips as a meal, but it makes me feel like a hassle. It is a feeling similar to failing; if my goal is to find adequate food to eat, I fail more than I would like to. By the time my high school youth group all knew that I would need some other option for meals other than their meat standard, I felt like I was causing a huge inconvenience. Maybe I just hate the attention on myself, but this feeling is so specific. It is easy to forget about since I have dealt with it my entire life until I see the same feeling in a TV show.
At the camp that I went to throughout high school and that I helped out with this summer, many of the counselors are vegetarians. For the first time maybe ever at a camp, I had a vegetarian option for every meal. This year, occasionally, the meals would take longer to get out when the kitchen served everyone else. I told one of our camp directors who is also a vegetarian that I felt bad about making them prepare something for me. I said that they should not have to do that for kids who have picky diets. She said, “I think they should.”
The south has not felt that need to serve the meatless eaters yet. However, sides can be great. I hope to never settle for a bowl of pickles as a side and I hope to find others who understand the failure to find meat-free meals. It is not the biggest problem in the world or my life by far, but I have nonetheless become an expert on this type of failure.
