Dinner is the default first date, and for vegans it’s close to the worst available option.
Not because the food is a problem. Because it puts a menu between you for the first hour of knowing someone. You’re scanning for something you can actually eat, you’re deciding whether to ask the waiter, and if your date says “oh, can you eat that?” in a kind voice you’re now explaining yourself over a starter instead of finding out whether you like them.
These are dates with anybody, whether they’re vegan or not. Most work as first dates. Cooking and swimming are for when you know each other a little better.
Two shapes of first date
1. A brewery tap room
Beer is mostly vegan, tap rooms rarely have a menu worth negotiating, and the room is loud enough that a lull is not a silence.
The “mostly” earns a word. Some beers, cask ales especially, are fined with isinglass, which comes from fish. Barnivore (opens in a new tab) has thousands of them listed and settles it in about ten seconds, and tap-room staff will usually just tell you. Ask once at the bar and the rest of the evening is sorted.
2. A bakery, in the afternoon
Vegan bakeries went from a novelty to a category, and a good one turns “what can you eat here” into “what should we get”. The whole thing is short by design. Forty minutes and a decent cinnamon bun beats two hours of committed eye contact.
3. A market, on a weekend morning
Wander, find something to eat, buy something you had no plans to buy. It works because it’s a walk with things to look at, so neither of you has to carry the conversation alone. Look for a market with vegan food options before you go.
4. An animal sanctuary
A genuinely lovely afternoon with a built-in supply of things to talk about, and if you’re both vegan it carries none of the weight it would carry with anybody else.
If your date is not vegan, still fine — go because you both like animals, not to make a point. Nobody enjoys being taken somewhere to be persuaded.
5. Cooking, at one of your places
One of the two that’s not a first date, and the reason is the kitchen rather than the nerves. Whose pans, whose oil, whose chopping board — for one of you that may be a shrug and for the other it may be the whole point, and it’s much easier to find that out once you already like each other.
6. A long walk and a flask
Free, weather-dependent and undefeated. Walking side by side removes the interview format completely, and either of you can end it at any point without it being a verdict.
7. A small gig
A band neither of you has heard of, in a room that holds a hundred people. You get a shared reference by the end of the night whether or not the band was any good, and “that was terrible” is a better bonding experience than most dinners.
The point of a first date is to find out whether you like the person. Almost every default first date makes that harder.
8. A lido, or any swimming
The other one that’s not a first date. High stakes, very high information — you’ll know within an hour whether this is comfortable, and you’ll have skipped about four dates’ worth of politeness to get there.
9. Second-hand shops, with a budget
Buy each other one thing, with a limit you both agree beforehand. It’s a game, it takes an hour, it costs almost nothing, and it produces an object that’s either genuinely nice or extremely funny. You can agree beforehand whether leather and wool are off the list.
10. A climbing wall
The best structure of the lot, which is why it’s last: bursts of conversation separated by a task, with a completely legitimate reason to stop talking. Nobody has to be good at it. Being visibly bad at something in front of someone is the fastest shortcut to not performing.
The thing all ten have in common
They give you something to do together, instead of making conversation carry the whole date.
When the meal is the date, being vegan is the first fact about you, and you spend the evening being a category. When the date is a wall, a walk or a wildly bad support band, being vegan is just true about you, in the background, where it belongs.
And if you would rather skip the negotiation altogether: on Grazer everybody is already vegan, vegetarian or plant-based, so the menu goes back to being a menu.