Veggie Friendly puts down virtual roots

Last night I was eating dinner in Bermuda, at a restaurant called the Swizzle Inn (the one on the South Shore), and for dinner I had a salad and french fries.

I think my fellow vegetarians may understand that a salad-and-french-fry dinner means only one thing: There were no other veggie-friendly options. To be fair to the Swizzle, there was another option -- a veggie quesadilla. But, the description of this quesadilla mentioned that it had mozzarella cheese, and that didn't sound quite right to me. I like my quesadillas with more, you know, Mexican-sounding cheese.

So it was a Greek salad, decent, with good dressing, and a basket of very hot but not salty enough french fries. Not a bad dinner, really. I think the reason the salad-and-french-fry dinner was so unsatisfying was because the first thing I had seen on the menu was a tasty-looking veggie burger. The ingredients mentioned had included lentils, mild curry, and caramelized onions on top. Mmmm...now that sounds like a veggie burger that's worth its place in the burger world. However, the veggie burger is only available at the Swizzle before 6 p.m., inexplicably. And, it was close to 8 p.m., and we came back home to Boston today, so it looks like it'll have to wait till the next trip. The tantalizing, unavailable veggie burger certainly made my salad and french fries just a few degrees less appetizing than they were anyway.

And while I was eating, I was thinking how much I would have loved some kind of warning that it would be one of those nights, where my restaurant dinner options would be a salad and french fries. I'd especially like to know how veggie-friendly a restaurant is here in Boston, where I eat out much more often than I do in Bermuda. So, here goes: my blog about vegetarian eating in the Boston area (and other places I go sometimes).

OK, so this post can serve as my first review: I give the Swizzle Inn three stars. I thought I'd go with two stars, but in retrospect, I think it deserves three stars instead of two, mostly because of the mere existence of the lentil/curry/caramelized onions burger. Also, the hummus added at least half a star, as did the waiter's shared bafflement about the unavailability of the burger after 6 p.m.

However, on another, non-veggie-related note, the service was really, really slow. I'll probably chalk that up to the whole island time thing.