Green with envy

This nightmare seldom happens in London restaurants today - but I guess most vegetarians have lived through it once or twice (at least). Picture the scene: a meal with friends at a well-respected restaurant. The time to order arrives; waiter, pencil and pad poised, grins, and ... oh God! That gutwrenching moment dawns when you see there's no vegetarian main course on the menu (or if there is, it's some sort of basic cheese bake).

It's sad that, even in these enlightened times, a vegetarian or vegan diet can seem out of step with the rest of the world. When this happened to me recently, I asked if chef could make something up.

The response was "No". I felt as if I had horns and had just landed on a spacecraft from Venus. Hugely embarrassing.

All I could order was a selection of vegetable side dishes, among which was red cabbage with apple sauce. When it arrived, it had a distinctly unvegetarian whiff. The reason soon became clear - it was full of bacon, a fact which highlighted the chef 's lack of attentiveness. It can be tough out there if you're a veggie.

I grew up a vegetarian and my mum [Linda McCartney] would do most of the cooking in our home. Her cooking was creative and diverse, so we always ate well. This gave me a passion for eating and a love of exploring all the various food styles from around the world - like Mexican, Japanese and so on.

One of the most exciting aspects of eating out for me in London is finding a meal that I couldn't make myself at home.

Unfortunately, tracking them down can prove difficult, as the above incident proves. I hate ending up ordering spaghetti with tomato sauce.

This lack of interest and creativity serves to make veggies look and feel abnormal and boring when we are not. So, I appreciate it when I find restaurants that don't just load their menus with meat and fish.

Thank goodness there are now so many places that challenge staid convention - that vegetarians live on brown rice and nut roast; that carnivores can't be tempted by succulent vegetable options.

The following are two excellent places for vegetarians. The first recently won an award for its imaginative vegetarian dishes, the second is a fully-fledged vegetarian restaurant. Both are well worth a visit.