No meating of minds

Gorgeous scenery, secluded beaches and historic places are all very well, but when I go overseas I like to do one thing in particular: eat. But this simple pleasure has been troublesome of late; ever since, in fact, I started going out with a vegetarian.

Perhaps we're spoiled in Britain, where virtually any eating place has at least one meat-free option on the menu. It's often less easy abroad: yet it was only recently in nearby, free-thinking Paris that I realised I was dating a member of a bizarre social substratum, as waiters responded to vegetarian requests with a haughty incomprehension not seen at home for decades.

Does my desire to find my girlfriend a decent meal abroad make me, as one reader accused, a cultural imperialist? I like to think not.

In many poorer countries such as India and Thailand, vegetarian cooking dominates. So what's Europe's excuse? Spain is, by and large, beyond redemption. Even in comparatively vegetarian-friendly Italy, I've had to discreetly divert a piece of bacon from my girlfriend's 'tomato' pasta sauce. The best meals, in her experience, have been in Finland, even when the rest of us were tucking into those cute little reindeer.

Yet the worst offenders are the French who, having discovered limitless ways to serve up a dead cow, are rendered helpless by the possibilities of a plant. Just one or two non-meat options on a menu can make a world of difference.

In Paris, the answer still seems to be to march vegetarians off to segregated, specialist restaurants to do their shameful thing alone. A brief reconnaissance of three or four such establishments - the type to have picked their wallpaper from a thin catalogue of 1970s favourites - suggests these are not always joyful places.

This annoyance shouldn't be construed as anti-French - au contraire. It's simply that any country with pretensions to be a leader in global cuisine needs to wake up and smell the tofu. There are an estimated three million declared vegetarians in Britain alone and seven million more in the Netherlands and Germany.

There are even a million in France. This number implies several million more partners, parents and friends who won't be able to dine somewhere with no vegetarian options, and others who might just not fancy a double daily meatfest on holiday.

Many vegetarians are likely to be young, affluent, urban - just the type of people inclined to visit Paris and get all sentimental about baguettes and subtitled films. The tourist industry could do worse than think about catering for them. And by all accounts, a little experimentation might do France's stagnating restaurants no harm either.

Few people want to see their precious holiday turn into an abortive restaurant hunt. Of course you can self-cater or rough it, but it doesn't make a short city break appealing. For a significant minority of tourists, anywhere that makes life difficult for vegetarians - and their partners - can't cut the mustard.

Vegetarians going to Paris can find a list of restaurants at

· Gwyn Topham is editor of Guardian Unlimited Travel, featuring the best travel writing from the Guardian and the Observer.