There’s a lot to like about Iran. The people are some of the most hospitable I’ve encountered anywhere in the world, the architecture and history are amazing, and the cities are adorned with lush parks. But one bugbear of my short stay there was the difficulty in getting vegetarian food.

I’d been pre-briefed that Iran was tough for vegetarians, so I memorised the Farsi phrase for “I am vegetarian” on the plane trip into Tehran. My first chance to use it came the next day in a local restaurant.

“Man sabzi khor am”, I told the friendly restaurant owner.

“Ahhh” he said, nodding in understanding while looking at me as though I were crazy. He pointed to a dish on his menu, which helpfully had an English translation. It read “vegetable stew.” I nodded happily. Soon after he returned with a plate of colourful saffron rice and a big bowl of a lentil stew with vegetables. I dug my spoon into it, but was puzzled to pull out a brown, fleshy chunk. Was it eggplant? Or fake meat? No! It was mutton and it was all through the “vegetarian” stew. 

After this experience I decided that my approach of claiming to be vegetarian was too subtle.

I wrote out this message, and had a friend in Tehran translate it into Farsi for me. Showing it to restaurants generally got the message through and led to one of three scenarios.

1. The restaurant manager politely apologised and explained that they had no vegetarian food and could not feed us.
2. More commonly, the restaurant manager assured us they had a vegetarian stew, by which they meant that they would try to pick out the meat of their most vegetarian stew before serving us, not always successfully.
3. The restaurant manager asked the chef to make up a special vegetarian dish from scratch (none were on the menu). These were always delicious and gratefully received.

The challenge for vegetarians is eating out. 99% of local restaurants had no vegetarian dishes on their main menu, and no vegetarian mezzes as in the Middle East. Some had dishes that were described as a “vegetable” stew but in our experience they weren’t vegetarian.

The main problem was that restaurants seemed to make their dishes in advance, rather than fresh, so if the dish had meat in it they couldn’t modify it to suit vegetarian needs.

Spot the difference: One of these vegetable stews is not vegetarian.

We didn’t hit upon a perfect method for getting vegetarian food in Iran. However, our most successful strategies were:

• Showing the waiting staff our Farsi phrases, particularly the request for a dish without meat or fish. I recommend printing off these photos and sticking them to a business card, or else getting a friendly Iranian to write it out for you when you first arrive.
• Having food made up fresh, rather than ordering off the menu. Vegetable casseroles or vegetable kebabs were the two dishes that kitchens could usually whip up.
• Eating non-Iranian food. Pizza is huge in Iran, especially in Shiraz. Because it is always made up for the customer we had no problem getting a vegetarian version. The tomato sauce and mayonnaise that came with it took some getting used to.
•  There is also an Indian population in Iran, at least in the larger cities. Indian food and restaurants were a safe source for vegetarian food.
• Larger hotel restaurants often put on a salad buffet at lunch and dinner. The buffet is predominantly vegetarian and has lots of fresh salad ingredients and a choice of dressing. You can have a meal of just the buffet, although on our bill at one hotel this was described as “order without food”, which sums up the Iranian view of a meal without meat.
• Buy fresh bread and vegetables and make your meal yourself. There are plenty of good fresh food sellers in Iran. Some hotels will let you use their kitchen or rent apartments with kitchenettes, but you can always make great sandwiches at a pinch.

The vegetable kebab is your friend.

Of all the countries I’ve visited, Iran was the most challenging for a vegetarian because of the lack of vegetarian food in restaurants and the lack of understanding of what vegetarianism means amongst restaurant staff. The saddest part was that it was hard for us to experience authentic Iranian food because so much of it was inaccessible to us. However, amongst the horror there were some great vegetarian experiences and we generally found that with persistence and patience we got a vegetarian meal in the end.

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