This is interesting. There's a few successful "vegetarian/vegan" places in my area, but they're all basically some variant of Chinese food and are from moderate

This is interesting. There's a few successful "vegetarian/vegan" places in my area, but they're all basically some variant of Chinese food and are from moderately to pretty good. There's also a few Indian places, but they don't really seem to register with the local vegetarian population as such, but at least can be quite good if you know where to look and have the usual amounts of flavor that Indian food tends to have. However, there's a couple "Western" vegetarian/vegan joints in my immediate area that I've tried a couple of times. To be fair you get lots of food for the money, but both places produce a product that really is quite flavorless -- even with pretty different menus. Things like extra spicy vegan chili go down with the flavor profile of water, other dishes taste like salad baked in an oven, it's really dreadful shit. Yelp reviews for both places? 4+ stars. shrug