Chicago has a reputation as a serious meat city — the stockyards, the Italian beef, the deep-dish loaded with sausage — and while that reputation is earned, the city's dining scene had, by the early 2010s, developed a parallel track of genuinely excellent plant-based cooking that was happening not just in dedicated vegetarian restaurants but scattered through the menus of places that primarily served meat-eaters.

For vegans navigating a city where the culinary default involves animal products, this development was significant. It meant that going out for dinner with non-vegan friends no longer required steering the entire group toward specialized restaurants. It meant that some of the city's most skilled kitchens were applying their craft to plant-based dishes with the same seriousness they brought to everything else on the menu.

The range was wide. At certain upscale establishments in the West Loop, the vegetable tasting menu was receiving as much critical attention as the protein-centered main menu. Thai and Ethiopian restaurants in Rogers Park and Andersonville had long offered extensive vegan options as a matter of culinary tradition. Mexican taquerias were producing excellent preparations with nopal (cactus), beans, and squash that happened to be vegan without positioning themselves that way. Middle Eastern spots offered falafel, hummus, and fattoush that needed no adaptation.

The lesson embedded in the best of these dishes was that plant-based cooking rewards the same attention to seasoning, technique, and layering of flavors as any other cooking — and that chefs who understand this produce food that is interesting on its own terms, not as a substitution for something else.

Chicago's vegan diners had more options than the city's reputation might suggest.