Being a Vegetarian in Dublin

I’ve taken a bit of a break from my blog, but I think I’m ready to get back to it now. I finished up my internship on April 1st and went home for a three-week visit. It felt really good to be home - almost too good, because I had trouble making myself get on the plane to come back here. But I missed my Collie doggie too much to leave him in Dublin all on his lonesome. So I made it back, and now I’m starting my job search all over again!

I’ve had a little bit of luck with my employment search so far, but I don’t want to talk about it yet because I don’t know anything for sure yet. So I’m going to dedicate this post to my recent decision to become a vegetarian.

Colin doesn’t agree with my decision, but he’s trying to be supportive. I thought it would be pretty difficult to avoid meat in Ireland, but it’s been two weeks since I returned and I haven’t run out of meal ideas yet. Its a bit annoying that there aren’t any large health food stores here that would compare to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s back home, and Tesco, Dunnes, Superquinn etc. only offer a limited selection of soy products. But I’ve been doing some research online, and there is a chain of small shops called Nourish that sells tempeh and tofu, among other things. And there’s a Nourish store in a shopping center not too far from our house (the Omni), so I’ll probably be making a trip there soon.

As far as vegetarian restaurants go, Govindas - which I blogged about before - seems to be the biggest (it has three locations in Dublin). There’s also a place called Cornucopia off Grafton St. that has received good reviews online. (When I have more money I’ll be heading there to make up my own opinion about it.) Then there are a few little cafes that cater to vegetarians, but as far as I know they don’t serve dinner.

Vegetarianism doesn’t seem to be nearly as popular here as it is in the U.S. There are signs that it is starting to catch on, though. Tesco recently launched its own line of veggie burgers and veggie “fingers” in the frozen food section, and I just noticed this week that they’ve started stocking frozen soy beans, too.