The posh vegetarians of Paris

Ah, the River Café. Can any single establishment have been so influential in making us eat our greens? Last year's River Café Cookbook Green introduced a wide-eyed public to the joys of agritti and cima di rapa. Go to the right west London Sainsbury, and you may even chance upon a stash.

But the new veggie haunts rather more specialist venues. "I shop at the Bluebird on the King's Road and Sundance on the King's Road," says fashion PR Nicky Jamieson. The two vast, gleaming modern emporia cater to a clientele that eat and travel light, without ideological baggage. "I don't want the usual sort of Cranks stuff. I'm the kind of person who will snack on roquette like crisps."

"I cannot live without pak choi," says Liz Page, a city fund manager who calls herself "a lapsed carnivore". "You can steam it, fry it, snack on it. It is what eating was invented for. I can't be bothered with anything you have to do anything to, but if you slap a bit of flavoured oil on this stuff, it's unbelievable."

Sparkling shelves full of light leafy green, purple and yellow, mizuna, mibuna, are what the posh veggie craves. They can't stand pastry - and all that heavy nut wellington stuff (nuts are fattening anyway). They want it fast. They love the cabbage soup diet - especially as you can now get it in cup-a-soup form to avoid all that horrible preparation.

Gregg Wallace - one half of Radio 4s Vegtalk team - started his vegetable import company back in the Eighties, and reports strange goings on since then down at New Covent Garden. "It has changed totally. Iceberg is out. Mustard and cress, you just can't sell it. We now sell 16 varieties of beef tomato. They don't want lemons, they want lemon leaf."

People want anything on a stalk or on the vine. "That's a great ploy," says Gregg. "Like wrapping granny next door up in a rubber dress. The vine smells more than the tomato. We used to sell four or five boxes a day: now we sell 200 five-kilo boxes. We used to call rocket rocket and no one wanted it - now it's roquette and we shift 150 kilos a day."

There is a certain insanity abroad. Take the boom in the best wild mushrooms: "It's hysterical: they're picked in Scotland, sent to France, then they bring them back here. There's got to be an easier way."

Not for obsessive chefs who crave the stuff, however. "Marco Pierre White once asked us for flat-leaf parsley with all the leaves the same size. It gets like that sometimes."

So London's chefs are clearly in a position to match the heroic efforts of M Passard. A rather more down-to-earth Paul Gayler, executive head chef at the Lanesborough, was the first chef in the capital to grasp the veggie nettle and he is about to introduce a five-course meat-free "menu de dégustation" at his glamorous Hyde Park Corner redoubt.

Diners will be able to choose between "goat's cheese filled with basil and tomato on an aubergine and pinenut relish" and "pancake of socca chickpea stuffed pancake" among others. At around £15 for a main course, it seems like sweet charity in the face of the Gallic alternative.

But if you want something a little closer to home, the casual veggie is increasingly satisfied in rather humbler surroundings. M&S reports that its sales of veggie meals (around £2 a pop) have gone up 50 per cent, much of that in the past year - which is why it launched a superior new range, with the likes of Moroccan filo pies and mint dressings. At Books for Cooks in Westbourne Grove, the hot title is the Café Paradiso cookbook, classy vegetarian fare by Dennis Cotter, a top vegetarian chef based in, of all places, Cork .

But if you want to knock your dinner guests for six, check out M Passard's website (www.alain-passard. com) where he periodically posts recipes from his latest menus. And if you do find anywhere that sells "huile d'argan", in which he soaks his harissa-flavoured veg in light couscous (£50), could you let me know?