A Steakhouse Dinner—For Vegetarians, Made At Home

While you can cut and cook vegetables (people do it with beets, eggplant, butternut squash, mushrooms, cabbage, and, yes, cauliflower) in a certain way and call them steak, I don't think—if it were up to the vegetables—they'd answer to that name.

Vegetables are not steaks, and it does a disservice to hold them to those standards. We like vegetables, in part, because they are not steaks—not in spite of it.

But that doesn't mean there aren't vegetarian dishes worthy of the same sort of pomp and circumstance that a sirloin elicits. This vegetarian menu would be right at home in the plush banquette of a steakhouse—or, this Valentine's Day, at the tableclothed card table in your kitchen.

So here you have it: a menu worthy of a steakhouse, served in a non-steakhouse, without any steak (vegetable or otherwise):

Starters and salads:

Taking the place of steak:

Sides and sidekicks:

And the best for last:

Vegetable steaks: Yay or nay? Share your opinion in the comments.