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Vegetarian Appeal: Hotels Creating Turkey Free Thanksgiving Meals Turkey's still the champ on Thanksgiving. But many hotels create special vegetarian and allergen free menus to attract a wider array of clientele. Tuesday, November 25, 2008 Caryn Eve Murray

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Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1943 portrait of a Thanksgiving dinner, “Freedom from Want,” features a table laden with turkey, stuffing and the traditional works. It’s a far cry from the images of a modern Thanksgiving celebration just down the street from Rockwell’s Stockbridge, MA studio.

There, at the Red Lion Inn, one of the centerpieces of the holiday table is the sweet potato gnocchi served with tomato puree and Portobello mushrooms. It’s a vegetarian alternative on the same a la carte menu from executive chef Brian Alberg that also offers sauces and gravies thickened with cornstarch or arrowroot, accommodating gluten sensitive guests who must avoid wheat flour.

Serving a traditional sit-down dinner for 600, with variations on a culinary theme, requires some advance planning in the inn’s kitchen, said Alberg, as well as making sure the wait staff is well-prepped to answer guests’ questions.

“When we do menu changes I go over it with the wait staff, what is gluten-free, what isn’t, so they don’t have to come and ask me later,” particularly when guests with special needs are ordering, he said.

The result? A meal delivered with the smoothness of lump-free gravy itself.

That’s the goal for a number of hotels who’ve learned to carve out a welcome in their Thanksgiving meal plans that may not always include carving a big oven-roasted bird or other traditional trimmings.

“Every year our culinary team is ready to accommodate special dietary needs,” Chad Minton, executive chef at the Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey near Los Angeles, wrote in an e-mail. “When planning our extravagant holiday buffets we make every effort in recognizing vegetarian and vegan dining. Gluten free and macrobiotic offerings are discussed with each individual guest, emphasizing healthful preparations with the focus on spotlighting the natural beauty of the raw ingredients rather than masking them in overly complicated preparations. My team and I strive to provide each and every guest with cuisine that is sophisticated, never complicated no matter their dietary needs.”

With nearly 300 guests from the Vegetarian Society of D.C. descending with their appetites upon the Hyatt Regency in Bethesda, Md., again this year, executive chef Jack Stubbs is a veteran of the turkey-free table: his butternut squash soup kicks off the dinner, followed by a colorful almond-topped salad with arugula, cherry tomatoes, mint, mango, peppers, and a baked tofu stuffing platter takes center stage.

Stubbs said the hotel’s proximity to the National Institutes of Health, also in Bethesda, have kept his 11-person kitchen challenged year round to fashion satisfying special recipes.

“We have a lot of folks from NIH who stay here, so I have to create menus for cancer patients, anti-oxidant recipes,” he said, “so I have done it across the board. I love it.”

In many ways, the buffet-style feast at the Amelia Island Ritz Carlton in Florida, makes guests’ choices easier, said Thomas Tolxdorf, executive chef. “Because of the variety on our buffet for Thanksgiving we haven’t had many additional requirements,” he said. But it is not uncommon for the kitchen to talk in advance to guests any time of the year if they have concerns about special food allergies that may have life-threatening consequences.

“The good thing about Thanksgiving and gluten is that a lot of the food that is served for Thanksgiving is OK for gluten-free diets,” said Tolxdorf. “You are looking at sweet potatoes and turkey and a lot of the side dishes, the beans, they can take all that. With the stuffing you have to be a little more creative, same thing with the breads.” The hotel baker creates gluten-free bread using potato starch, quinoa flour and tapioca starch which, at Thanksgiving time, can become the basis for a gluten-free stuffing.

Serving vegetarians is actually somewhat simpler because two of the hotels’ three restaurants already feature separate vegetarian menus year round. “Thanksgiving is going to be pretty similar,” he said. “We’re just going to adjust some of the menu items.”

Tolxdorf said that some 2,000 guests will be at the hotel celebrating the holiday, and about 25 to 30 of them will have some sort of dietary special need.

Executive chef Justin Ermini is the architect of the menu at the Mayflower Inn and Spa in Washington, CT, with input from spa chef, Jana Butler.

The team is expecting as many as 400 Thanksgiving diners this year, with service in an afternoon and an evening sitting, Butler said.

To simplify special-needs diners without having to duplicate too many efforts, the kitchen strategy is to finish off some of the dishes on a case-by-case basis – leaving off any cheese, for instance, until the last minute.

In general, she said, “We get a lot of requests for no butter, no cream, no salt – so even our sauce, the country gravy, is seasoned to order,” she said. “If we have something like a sweet potato puree on the menu, it is already made without salt.”

Vegetarian options this year include a main course of pumpkin risotto – made with pumpkins harvested from a farm just down the street – and a ravioli appetizer made with wild mushrooms and Taleggio cheese.

Thanksgiving, or at least the planning for it, starts well in advance in the kitchen of the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, NH, where Chef Calvin Belknap, executive director of food and beverage, and sous chef Matt Holland are prepared for 800 guests at an early buffet and 400 for an evening sit-down dinner.

“As a chef, I try not to rotate myself around turkey or a piece of meat,” said Belknap. “Celiac [disease] is very very common with us at the resort, and in a busy week with families here with young children, food allergies have gone up, have doubled in the past 10 to15 years. It is quite common and we are proud we have strived to provide a tasty wholesome meal,” one that welcomes everyone to the table, he said.

Thanksgiving is no exception.

“I think about the foods and flavors of the season and the harvest,” said Holland. “And for vegetarians, there are different starches, grains and legumes, even protein replacements like tofu and tempeh, you can manipulate to take on the flavor of other things.

”We take specific caution in preparing certain items if we know customers are coming who may not be gluten friendly. And if someone requires a special meal and we were not aware of it ahead of time, we will go out into the dining room to greet the customer and make them feel a little more comfortable, to bridge the gap and make them feel at home here. … Whenever we have new customers we have not cooked for in the past, we like to meet them and let them know we are thinking of them.”

That translates into providing a light curried carrot broth or pureed roasted vegetables to serve as a gluten-free gravy for someone’s turkey.

Another possible option this year: A meat-free a white bean napoleon with cranberries, walnuts and autumn flavors such as sage.

After all, even 65 years after Rockwell transformed a blank canvas into an abundant holiday feast, Thanksgiving still comes down to freedom from want for everyone.