At Sushi Samurai, the entirely vegan sushi restaurant at the top of Queen Anne, I dug into my konjac-root salmon and neatly rolled dragon roll. The faux fish was fine, nothing remarkable. But the meal as a whole was one of my favorites on a mission to suss out the city’s best vegan food. Veganity aside, Sushi Samurai was one of the few restaurants that started by getting the fundamentals right: the rice was perfectly cooked, the roll was tight, the nori still crisp.

Elsewhere, I encountered oddly dense udon noodles, a series of sharp and unbalanced sauces, and so very many under-seasoned vegetables; problems that have nothing to do with a lack of animal product. I’m not expecting every place (or any place) to custom-craft a perfect substitute for short ribs or hand-paint fat lines on their fake-on. I’m talking about not neglecting the fundamentals.

Seattle deserves better vegan food. Seattle’s vegans, though surprisingly few in number, deserve the kind of selection of vegan restaurants found in Portland, the Bay Area, and New York. What set Sushi Samurai, Wayward Vegan Cafe, and the others earning a spot on our list of the best vegan restaurants apart had much less to do with if or how they sidestepped animal products and far more to do with focusing on flavor and execution of the basics.

When people make the decision to become vegans, they do not suddenly lose their taste buds. They have chosen to prioritize their ethics, dietary choices, or personal preferences over seeking flavor at any cost. But that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten it exists.

So why use terrible tortilla chips if Juantonio’s (RIP Juanita) are already vegan? Did anyone bother to taste that bitter soy queso before they sent it out? The process for cooking udon noodles or dried spaghetti does not change if the sauce shuns fish-based dashi or chicken stock. As far as I know, salt, pepper, garlic, and MSG, building blocks of easy flavor, all qualify as vegan. And—sorry to be grumpy—what makes perturbingly slow service a requirement at most vegan spots? Is attentiveness a dairy product?

Seattle has a much lower vegan population (by number and percentage) than many cities in the US (33 of them, to be exact), but that feels like a cop-out justification for the mediocre restaurant selection. A great vegan restaurant becomes a destination for omnivores. It doesn’t have to survive on the few existing vegans if it appeals to a wider audience—and the best ones can even encourage more people to be vegan-curious.

The shared feature of the best vegan spots on our list was a culinary focus: sushi, Mexican food, Thai food. It’s a good start. But a metropolitan area of four million people deserves more. We deserve places like Mirisata serving rich, colorful Sri Lankan rice and curry in Portland, Vedge’s modern love letter to the vegetable in Philadelphia, and the menu of creative 'tinis and weenies by Lion Dance Cafe at Oakland’s Tallboy.

I get that vegan restaurants often try to be everything to their vegan audiences, with big menus to satisfy all cravings. I get that I, a person who can get almost whatever I want in the city (except, for some reason, Burmese food), am not the primary audience. But I love the opportunity to eat less meat for health and sustainability reasons, and to eat great meals with vegan friends. I want to throw my dining budget at intricately spiced lentil fritters and silky vegetable broth soups. I want to sip aquafaba cocktails over plates of french fries covered in cashew cheese. And since non-vegan chefs can’t seem to stop dropping their fries into the same oil in which they just cooked a chicken, Seattle needs the vegan restaurants it deserves.