In this day and age there are so many vegetarian meat replacements, I’m not sure I’d notice if I was at a vegetarian barbecue.
Naturally, when Nick Smalley was invite to one, he was expecting all the BBQ classics, but meat free. What he was actually served was much funnier – but maybe not for him on an empty stomach.
The Michigan meat eater was left in shock, after queueing with his plate in excitement to see the new age vegetarian spread, to be handed what is being named an ‘aspara-dog’.
You heard me.
Speaking to UNILAD, Nick said:
It was Memorial Day in the US and a buddy of mine invited me to go to this vegetarian BBQ with with them. ‘Vegetarian BBQ’ was suspicious enough but I said ‘why not’ and showed up cause I knew more than just my friend was going.
When I got there the hosts still had the food on the grill and the people there were chilling out with drinks and snacks. The food smelled awesome, kinda like actual meat was being grilled so I was impressed.
After chatting for about an hour I heard the hosts saying it’s time to grab the food. So now I’m in the kitchen waiting for the meal while this really loud rap is playing throughout the house.
When it was my turn to grab my plate I finally saw it. It was a tray of literally vegetables. No veggie burgers, no veggie-dogs, nothing. The host came over and just handed me a bun and said “You can use this for the aspara-dogs,” and pointed to the row of charred asparagus.
Here are some vegan alternatives that Nick would probably be more into…
Nick continued:
I didn’t know what to do with this poor excuse for a veggie hotdog. The fact that the hosts thought this was okay to serve at a cookout for over 15 people was too much to process and I just sort of accepted my fate. The host saw me looking at it and just was like ‘try it, it’s good I promise’.
By this point the music was starting to hurt my head so I took a bite to make her happy. There was so much bread and not enough vegetable and it was so dry I almost gagged. I couldn’t make her feel bad so I just gave her a thumbs up and left the kitchen quickly.
Aside from that it was a really enjoyable time but that was probably because of the beer.
At least Nick was fairly polite towards their vegetarian ways, unlike the Toronto restaurant owner who tucked into a steak in front of vegan protestors a few months ago.
The footage of Michael Hunter carving the leg of a deer and tucking into a steak in the window of his restaurant while vegan demonstrators protested outside went viral.
Nick tweeted the photo of his sad solo wilted ‘aspara-dog’ (hurts me to type that), saying ‘I’m at this vegetarian BBQ and they deadass handed me this’.
The tweet received over 1.9k likes and 595 retweets, with plenty of comments from outraged meat-eaters and vegetarians alike. One vegan food producer even hijacked the Twitter thread to offer a better non-meat option to make up for the abomination of a hot dog.
Let’s vow never to say ‘aspara-dog’, again please.
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