I do sometimes think about eating meat. The smell of sausages or bacon is the biggest lure. I miss fish too, and seeing those rotary chickens make my mouth water. But beef and darker meats don't appeal at all anymore (OK, maybe a cheese burger). I can happily recreate most of those things to satisfy my needs.
The thought of eating flesh now just turns my stomach. Which is an odd sensation considering I used to eat a plate of sausages(!) for my tea when I felt lazy.
A lot of veggie food can be crap, really cardboard tasting crap. But I suppose it's no different to eating low-quality meat that probably contains 1% meat and the rest god-knows what. (I used to eat anything).
I never want to push vegetarianism onto anyone, but I always like to "share" in the surprise when I find a good veggie dish, as I love food and cooking it. So it excites me when I can say "This dish actually tastes great" and have a meat-eater agree.
When people ask me what I eat instead, I always think of a Sunday roast. Yep, there's a lot of meat in them sometimes, but there's also a hell of a lotta veg too. So I can have my lovely roasted potatoes, carrots, etc and if I really need to I can stick a few Linda McCartney sausages on the side. They are not greasy meat sausages, but with a few tricks (like Sausage Casserole) I don't think I'm really missing out.
If I were to give advice on anyone turning veggie, I'd say avoid tofu for a while and try other products instead (which will probably be made of Soy anyway (tofu). Because tofu is quite a hard thing to get right. Only works half the time when I do it, but when you get it, it's really nice. It's no meat, but it'll do.
They were awesome. There's still one in Brighton I'm sure. But if they could get a bigger chain going that would be awesome.
Wish me luck!