Anthony Bourdain is a lovable asshole. In all honesty, I’m much more of an asshole in writing than I am in person. For the sake of bringing my written persona and my actual persona together, here’s a level-minded point of view Anthony Bourdain would dislike.

I don’t hate vegetarians.

How could I? While I’ve contemplated setting up traps on my university’s campus to snag giant rabbits for stew, I’d volunteer countless hours to a gifted butcher to learn his craft, and I’d love to see how a chicken de-feather works in person, I appreciate vegetarians. It all comes down to my stepmother. She’s a vegetarian that taught me the craft of cooking vegetables.

As a New Yorker, she taught me to be brutally honest (well, not so much teaching as much as “I’ll be brutally honest about your faults until you learn this is good”). My food sucks and you want to tell me? You can, because I grew up hearing that type of honesty. Raised in San Francisco, it was a rude awakening at first; us West Coasters have been infiltrated by romantic ideas of “sensitivity” and “feelings” too deeply. It's permeated our core; we’ve sat in a comforting boiling stock until our harsh characteristics (who we are!) has become masked by the aromatics and bouquet garni next to us. New Yorkers went through this too, but after hours, and hours, and hours have reduced to a thick syrup that is their essence.

As a sprouting culinary enthusiast, a New York vegetarian will teach you things you coudn’t learn from even the best omnivorous CIA-trained professional chef. The latter is all too eager to dismiss the humble vegetable (Bourdain is guilty of this). What’s a potato without goose fat? A fava bean without lardon? But a New York vegetarian is not going to lie to themselves about the merits of home cooked bland veggies. Sure, their overwhelming pride will market their mediocre meal as a tasty attempt, and in the back of their minds they’ll pray their guests are too drunk to notice there’s lemon seeds in the salad and way too much oil pooling in the gratin. But in the back of their mind -if they’re sober enough- they’ll be plotting their next attack. They know when their food is “eh”, and I’d be damn surprised if the NY vegetarian doesn’t make that dish ten more times before their next dinner party… and serve it an hour sooner so her now-sober guests remember the good version of that dish.

As a vegetarian, my stepmother taught me to appreciate vegetables. We’re both absolutely in love with bitter vegetables: endive, broccoli rabe, arugula, etc. So don’t hate vegetarians. Here’s my advice as a Nor Cal sensitive-raised 24-year-old: take all that negative energy, man, and unload it on the vegans. They fucking deserve it.