Former foie gras-serving restaurant Gauthier Soho goes vegan

Gauthier Soho, a restaurant which used to serve foie gras is aiming to become 100% vegan within two years, the restaurant used to serve 20kg of foie gras per day.

The restaurant’s meat and seafood options currently include lobster and caviar ravioli, Berkshire pork fillet and Atlantic cod, however these are set to leave the menu by 2020.

Owner Alexis Gauthier said he was simply “answering my customers demands”, and said “two years ago we have 5% of our customers asking for vegan alternatives, we have by day 50, [we had] 60% of our customers [asking for vegan alternatives]”.

Gauthier told Catering Today: “For now, I wanted to become like restaurants used to do for vegans or vegetarians, where you will have a mainly meat and fish menu and then you will have a few items which cater for vegans or vegetarians, so we’re turning it around.

“We are mainly vegan but we have some dishes, 25% of our menu which still caters [for fish and meat eaters].”

When asked what inspired the change, Gauthier said: “Its an opportunity for us as chefs, especially me as a chef to look into the fact that I was in a position where I could perhaps change the way we all look at food, and perhaps move towards a restaurant world where animals are not anymore the centre stage of a meal.

“For many reasons and the one we know better than when I first started being a chef is that it is very well documented and well known that animals are just like us, they do not wish to be raised on a huge scale for the pleasure of us.”

Catering Today also asked Gauthier if he thought other restaurants should follow his example, however he said: “Everybody is realising it, its not only us at all, I can see it all the way down, I walk around Soho and I see everywhere offering vegan.

“I know it is not a fad, because everybody is well aware now, I mean it takes two minutes to research, a pig will get slaughtered with the same IQ as a three-year-old child.”