| rev:text
| - Arizona Wilderness used to be my and my husband's favorite place to take family and friends. We started going when the restaurant was only a couple months old and it's been fun to watch them grow into the building and renovate and experience how their beer offerings have changed over the years. My husband even had his bachelor party there when he and I got married. The food and beer at AZ Wilderness are good and the atmosphere is decent, but the reason why I've got to knock my rating down is because their service so poorly accommodates veganism.
Not only does being vegan at AZ Wilderness mean you have to explicitly ask questions of the hurried staff who aren't always diligent about responding as accurately as possible, request a protein/high calorie substitution which you may be charged extra for, but as for my own part, I believe I was knowingly served a duck fat-fried black bean patty by my server who knew that I was trying to opt out of animal products. I believe this because my patty was clearly breaded and deep-fried in something (and it was very crispy), but afterward I had the same familiar indigestion, gas, and heartburn that I've experienced before after eating animal products for the first time in a long time as an on-off vegetarian and have never experienced since going vegan, even after eating food that's been fried in oil.
For specific details, I called ahead of time to ask about vegan options, and when I asked if the black bean burger was free of all animal products, the person who answered the phone was very unsure but said that it was. Given the uncertainty she seemed to have, I asked if the buns that came with the patty were made with milk or eggs and she said she didn't know. If I hadn't asked, I would have just assumed she knew. She went on to suggest that I order a salad instead to make sure, but when I said I would be coming hungry and would prefer the burger if it was vegan, she suggested that I replace the buns with lettuce or leave them out entirely. I guess she doesn't know just how much more calories two big hamburger buns have than romaine lettuce, which is an honest mistake for an omnivore, but nevertheless I could see that I was getting nowhere with her so I thanked her, hung up, and decided to eat a lot before I went and just order a small salad when I got there.
When I arrived, it was my server who said he wasn't sure if he could substitute avocado for the cheese (there's no vegan salad), but told me that instead I could upgrade to putting a patty over the salad. I asked if the patty, just all by itself, was vegan, he went and asked the chef, told me that the chef told him it was, and then when our food arrived handed me a plate with a black bean patty that had been breaded and deep-fried. Given our previous conversation, I just assumed when I saw it that he would have made sure that it wasn't fried in duck fat, but my bowels told me the whole story later. I can't imagine a scenario where the chef breaded and fried a food, that's ordinarily meant for vegetarians, in duck fat (or anything for that matter), unless the server asked him to.
I was pretty upset about it and considered going back and asking management to waive our bill (we wouldn't have gone there if we'd known the server was going to do that), but I knew it would be a complete waste of time. Of course they'd just deny everything, if they even gave me enough time to even speak to someone who remotely cared at all. You really don't understand how much animal products screw up your digestion until you go without them for a long time and eat them again for the first time yourself so they probably wouldn't even have believed that I could know as well as I know that it really was duck fat fried.
I've knocked my rating down as low as I have because a place that celebrates the Arizona Wilderness really should put their money where their mouth is and offer an entree that's free of animal products, since it's animal products that destroy the wilderness more than anything else. We won't be back until the menu has some more obviously vegan options so I don't have to talk to anyone about substitutions, ask anyone questions, or rely on anyone else's sense of humor toward vegans.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)