A Hard Lesson to Learn: Vegetarians Buyer Beware!

My husband and I recently had a horrible experience at a restaurant lately. I wanted to share it with you so you could learn from our mistake. Here is my husbands review:

Evo - Worcester, MA: "My wife and I are vegetarians and love Worcester for the quality and quantity of restaurants that have veggie options. Today we made a trip to Worcester to attend the annual vegetarian fest at Worcester State College. At the event we picked up a brochure that listed Evo as being veggie-friendly and having vegan pizza and sandwiches. We figured we'd give it a shot.

Upon arrival we were thoroughly excited. The restaurant has a cool look and indeed, the menu is very veggie friendly. My wife ordered a tofurkey panani and I ordered a tofurkey wrap. As we waited for our food we were initially talking about coming back to try a number of other options we saw on the menu. All of that changed....

Our food arrived and we dug in. We happily munched away on our lunch until my wrap fell apart and I noticed that the contents were not tofurkey at all. I had been eating a turkey sandwich. My wife's sandwich was indeed tofurkey, but mine was chalk-full of meat. Unfortunately, I had given my wife a bite of my food, so we both ate meat unknowingly. We were both physically sick when we realized the mistake.

For a restaurant that serves so many vegetarian and vegan options, we both felt like this was an unforgivable mistake. When told of the mistake our waitress didn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation. In fact, she didn't apologize and she still tried charged us for the sandwich!!!

Still being charged was the last straw. My wife, now in tears, approached the manager. The manager was much, much more understanding and apologetic. There were countless apologies and the manager took both of our sandwiches off of the tab.

The whole situation was disgusting and embarrassing. Needless to say, we'll never go back to Evo."

Now this restaurant was chosen as Best Vegetarian Restaurant 2009 in a Worcester Telegram & Gazette Reader's Poll! We learned a hard lesson that day; buyer beware. It is OUR responsibility to make sure our food is vegetarian. And just because a restaurant is advertised as being great for vegetarians does not mean we can let our gaurd down. In fact if we had done some research (on happycow.net) we would have discovered that this has happened a few times before.

Has anything like this ever happened to you? What did you do about it?