Do you mind explaining why you don't find meat particularly exciting? I personally have nothing much against vegetarians -- in all honesty my current diet (cheaper) is probably closer to that of a vegetarian's -- but whenever they dismiss meat as "uninteresting" they all seem to actually be quite ignorant of meat, and that they all seem to have ever bought theirs out of a styrofoam, shrinkwrapped package from a supermarket rather than a good butcher.
But yes, a nice spicy black bean burger sounds interesting!
Certainly meat can be exciting, but in many cases, and especially in modern western culture, it seems to be used as a crutch, in a sort of "just throw in some meat and you're done" way.
For instance, I've found vegetarian Indian restaurants vastly more interesting than Indian restaurants that rely on meat. It's not that I hate meat (I don't, and I'm not a a vegetarian), but the former sort simply seem to offer more interesting food, with a much wider range of flavors.
Note the stereotypical Airplane-meal question (where the actual dishes are quite different): "Chicken or beef?" I know they're just trying to be efficient, but this question seems to capture society's attitude: that once you know the type of meat involved, eh, the rest is just pointless detail.
So while meat can be a wonderful and interesting part of a meal, I think it would be better if it lost some of its overwhelming dominance, and became just another ingredient.
Nice note about the meat-orientated culture. To add to that, though, historically (and I find this, as you pointed out, a mostly Western thing, since coming from a southern Chinese culture I know that meats aren't elevated above other foods, ever) I'm pretty sure the role of meat in the dish's name is simply because every time anyone around the Renaissance era--foundation of Western cooking--would have made a huge deal about slaughtering a cow, and such names of dishes simply stuck with us since then.
I wonder how meat came to be so dominant though. Funnily enough, when the Old World found the New World they found a land so plentiful in meat, instead of jumping up in joy certain parts of society actually started to find meat disgusting. So maybe it's not really just a Western thing, but meat's dominance is mostly a New World thing: According to http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/visual..., USA, Canada, Australia and NZ are far ahead of everyone else in per-capita meat consumption. And it doesn't seem to be correlated with per-capita GDP either. This might also means that meat's dominance is also very recent, and not universal even in modern Western culture. Maybe it's simply a matter of who has an older history of eating traditions, traditions that are responsible for toning down the meat-mania?
Having known some vegetarians who claim meat is uninteresting and have had a good farm raised and wild caught meat in their pre-vegetarian days, I don't think this is a case.
I think for some people meat, and pretty much of all food, is fairly uninteresting it is pretty much just a way to fuel their body. They take fairly little joy in their meals - which seems a bit incomprehensible - but it seems to be the way it is.
I had good meat before I became a vegetarian but it's just not a food I really enjoy. I enjoyed high-quality meat but it just wasn't a taste I was ever especially attached to.
But yes, a nice spicy black bean burger sounds interesting!