Vegetarian/Vegan food finder for London | Hacker News Reader

Vegetarian/Vegan food finder for London

nopudding.com

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I built this! It uses responsive design to give both desktop & mobile users a good experience, and it degrades gracefully for users without JavaScript. I built it in Rails with the Google Maps & Food Standards Agency APIs, along with a lot of CoffeeScript.

I need to add more reviews of places, and more links, but I've been working on it for too long without it being live so I put it live earlier this week.

Great tool! Thank you :) I'm not personally vegetarian, but I found myself looking for one recently when I was in London and found it far too difficult. Minor suggestion: I'd make the "Vegan" label say "Vegan Only" (or "Only Vegan" I guess).

Also, what qualifies as a "chain"? I notice you have The Gate on there, but they have two locations, and you only have the one at Islington (and not the one at Hammersmith).

Thanks for your kind words! Chains are totally a judgement call; it's basically me deciding what 'feels indie'. I've not been to the one in Hammersmith yet; I'll add it when I visit.

Ah, I hadn't realised this was a personally-curated list (I see it now on the 'About' section). Since these are all places you've had personal experience with, why not add a sentence or two describing what you think? It's often really useful to read what one person thinks about several places (e.g. if we both like place A, and you like place B, that gives me more confidence that I'll like place B too).

Edit: I just noticed you have this too! I didn't realise there was additional information if you click on a pin rather than just mouse-over.

Congrats on launching! Will take another look when I'll be in London again.

If it's "only" you who submits these reviews, you could make it more personal by adding a paragraph of text with a non-objective description. Would also help to separate your USP compared to Happy Cow.

I know a vegan blogger who wrote posts about the places she visited in towns, and people like those. It's easier to compare/trust the reviews of a single person vs. the reviews on happy cow that are written by many different people.

I'm working on adding more reviews. They are rather sparse at the moment, you're right. I like the single-person perspective as well; I've never found the multiple reviews on sites like Happy Cow or Yelp that useful either.

Once you know how a reviewer views thinks relative to your own perspective, their reviews become much more relevant to you. I read some critics even though I never agree with them, but because I know how they think and what they like there reviews are much more useful. "Oh, they didn't like it. Perfect! I will like this one."

I guess you're only going for pure vegan/vegetarian places? Because these days, pretty much all restaurants do at least some vegetarian food. Vegan is harder of course.

Vegan drinking holes would be nice too :) http://www.veggiewines.co.uk/popularbeers.htm

http://www.barnivore.com is another great resource for checking on the vegan status of beer and liquor.

Thanks, I've been looking for a tool like this.

Love it! I'll use this when I come to London next time!

Nice! Congrats on the launch. Are you adding these on a place by place basis manually?

I've seen these mini directories fall by the wayside in the past, but I wish the author the best.

As someone that likes to eat vegan food and having worked in a vegan cafe, I think it's important to clearly state if an outlet has a vegetarian/vegan kitchen. That's very appealing to me. To be honest I've gotten lazy at asking in a lot of places about how they prepare their food.

We have something called a chip shop in the UK, where you can buy deep fried chips, sausages, chicken and fish. Some places keep the vat of fat for chips separate to the meat and fish friers, others mix it all up, and some chip shops (especially up norf'), use animal fats to fry in. I've bought countless bags of chips only to discover small bits of fish, or find the chips taste of chicken. Even in some places where I've asked and they've assured me otherwise. To be frank some people are too thick to even answer the question if posed or just don't care. I know for a fact the veggie burgers in Grubbs in Brighton were fried in the meat friers (though that might be past practice). It's also a bit of a turn off for me to watch someone make me a sandwich after they've just prepared someone elses and handled meat.

I'd like a veggie chip shop friendly list (if you can ever call a chip shop that)! I should cobble something together myself.

Where others have ascertained that the kitchen is veggie friendly, that's good information to share.

http://www.happycow.net exists already.

Happycow is very nice and helped me to find incredibly good places to eat even in meat heavy places like Argentina and Paris. I’m always surprised when I talk to owners of vegetarian restaurants and learn that they never heard about it.

Nice to see Rasa there. If you live in London and haven't been, go! Indian veg in angel is one of the best value meals london have to offer, 5.50 all you can eat of a selection of south indian curries. Possibly you could add the woodland restaurant on Panton street.

Good lord, its up to £5.50 now? Still a good deal, but it was £2 back in the day.

I moved to London in 2006 and it was £3 then which was at that point the price of a pint. Still 5.50 is quite good.

Are the colours of the map pins universally understood by your target audience? As a non-vegan/vegetarian, the thought behind it made complete sense as soon as I deselected options from the filter panel, but before that I was curious to what they meant. Including use of the same colours in the filter panel would have made me intuitively understand it.

I appreciate that it still has a view presented when loading without JavaScript.

Agreed; a key/legend would be good!

Well done for putting this together. What is disappointing is how few vegetarian restaurants there are! For such a large city you would expect a few more places on the map yet they are so few and far between.

My default option when there is nothing veggie specific is to eat some place Indian. Plenty of Indian restaurants do understand that vegetarianism is the way even if they do have dead animal dishes on the menu for those encultured from an early age to eat 'meat'. It would be helpful if the best Indian restaurants were on the list too.

One thing that does surprise me about the few vegetarian restaurants that are in London is the clientele. Places like Mildreds are packed night after night, and the punters seem that bit more vibrant, healthy, better looking, articulate and youthful than you would normally expect to find when eating out.

More generally, I think that something has to change regarding vegetarianism in London, much like how things have changed regarding cycling in London. As a society we cannot go on eating variants of endangered species on toast for every meal, it is just not on or necessary. Meat eaters need to lighten up a bit and put some variety into their diet.

Why can't the variety of vegetarian cuisine in London be a tourist attraction? Why can't house prices be that bit higher just because they are in an area where there is an excellent choice of vegetarian restaurants? (In the same way that being on a bicycle route adds to the value of a property.) Why can't we have some version of the 'Bake Off' on TV that is about vegetarian food, to celebrate it rather than be all preachy about how evil the meat industry is? Aside from Hitler, why is it that nobody knows of anyone famous for being vegetarian? This is particularly weird when so many celebrities, athletes, respected thinkers and others that people aspire to and respect are actually vegetarian. Where is the 'Boris' or 'Jamie Oliver' of the vegetarian cause?

Going back to the cycling situation we have had a culture shift in cycling and attitudes towards it that has not pissed off motorists. Even if they don't cycle they don't get uppity about those that do. We need something along the same lines for vegetarianism in London.

Anyway, I hope you too have ideas on how attitudes towards vegetarianism could change in London, it would be great if you could say so on your site.

This post was brought to you by the vegetarianism propaganda society.

Speculate on house prices just because there's a vegan restaurant round the corner? No thanks.

I don't approve of that logic. There's a potential vegan kitchen in every home, it's not a luxury, it's not a commodity, it's just is.

* edited to sound more polite, i think.

This is probably the first time I've actually Godwinned a discussion, but still: Hitler is not primarily "known" for having been a vegetarian. He did some other more notable things, too.

And he probably wasn't a vegetarian.

That's because he wasn't one.

I'm guessing because unlike many other cities, the vast majority of restaurants in London have vegetarian options.

>> My default option when there is nothing veggie specific is to eat some place Indian.

Be very careful with this - most Indian dishes are made with ghee (butter), yoghurt or cream, paneer (cheese), etc. Some aren't, but make sure you ask or the restaurant specifically says that it's vegan and not just vegetarian.

To be fair, I don't think the OP uses the word 'vegan' anywhere in his post. My vegetarian friends often get irritated when people confuse them for vegans. "Yes, of course I eat eggs. Yes, of course I drink milk"

"Yes, of course you should know the details of my diet based on one jargon word that means different things to different people but which I use to declare my deep-seated yet hastily-constructed beliefs."

My wife and I are "vegan" in that we try not to eat animal products. But what's made us able to do it for 2 years now is the flexibility we give ourselves. For us it's mostly not an ethical choice, so we don't feel bad when a sandwich comes with a slice of cheese, or if there is only pizza to eat at a party, or whatever.

It would be way to difficult, and just not worth it, to be strict about being vegan to a t. So, if you are vegan for reasons other than ethics/morals then I'd strongly recommend you accept some animal products in your diet to make issues like "Is there butter in my chana masala?" a non issue.

don't claim to be a vegan then! You are vegetarian.

It's really not difficult at all to be completely vegan. And whether it's worth it or not depends on your reasons for adopting a plant-based diet. Of course if it's for health reasons, it really doesn't matter if you get some animal products from time to time.

I've been doing it for 8 years without any flexibility. It's just silly to pretend that it's not feasible.

It's difficult in that you can't go out to a normal dinner without being really careful about what you eat. For instance, if you go to a normal restaurant (not one catering to vegans) and order a salad and ask for no cheese, but they bring you a salad that has cheese, or has croutons that are obviously all buttered up, or something else. Now you have to send it back and wait for them to make you a new one. For a lot of people that's fine. They're happy to get exactly what they want and to wait for it. For me it's not worth the effort, concern, stress or whatever. I just eat the salad.

So yeah, if you aren't bothered by interrogating every waiter at every restaurant you ever go to and returning food regularly, sure...it's not hard to be vegan. I'd rather live mostly vegan and not sweat the small stuff.

This is only true if you go to restaurants that serve dairy-heavy cuisines.

Go to any normal Chinese or Vietnamese or Thai restaurants and it's pretty hard to not find vegan foods on the menu. Mock duck, Buddha's delight, wood ear salad, stir fried soybeans and fermented cabbage, red cooked tofu and mushroom, braised seitan in soy sauce, eggplant in black bean sauce, bok choy in garlic sauce, etc etc -- these are all just normal dishes that are also vegan. The restaurant wouldn't even have to make any special accommodations for you.

This is deeply misleading. You are being flexible, by not trying to think to ahard about what you eat.

The most commmon definition of vegan is "produced without the inflicting suffering on animals". Some dairy/egg/meat free diets use "vegan" as label of convenience. (No one's allergies literally fall along the boundary of "all animal products are unhealthy for me")

Many sugar varieties are not vegan (bone char).

Many beers and wines are not vegan (Isinglass from fish).

Many bagels aren't vegan (L-cysteine from feathers).

Palm oil is not vegan (orangutan habitat destruction).

"Not difficult to be vegan" makes an arbitrary set of simplifying assumptions, namely "Is there a piece of an animal obviously visible in my food). It's not that different from having an occasional piece of cheese.

I'd second this. I read the word vegan as being 100% vegetarian with that being practically impossible to attain. But it's something aim for.

I think I was overtly strict for the first decade of being vegan. Going to the extreme. Consulting the Animal Free Shopper with each purchase.

These days I don't beat myself up so much about it. I'll even take a local ale (probably non-vegan) over a bottled lager. I'll avoid heavily packaged products even if they are vegan. I'll avoid flown in exotic veg.

I think you've got to find a line that you are comfortable with and be prepared to move it.

From the vegan society: A vegan is someone who tries to live without exploiting animals, for the benefit of animals, people and the planet. Vegans eat a plant-based diet, with nothing coming from animals - no meat, milk, eggs or honey, for example. A vegan lifestyle also avoids leather, wool, silk and other animal products for clothing or any other purpose.

If you take: A vegan is someone who tries to live without exploiting animals.

I'd take that and read it with an emphasis on 'tries'. Easier said than done.

In my mind most steps towards being 100% vegetarian is good. I know meat eaters that are careful to source their meat, and are actually mainly vegan except for say eating meat at the weekend. Who just as much have an issue with some agricultural and farming practices. The only difference between us is that I'm not comfortable with murder for my own personal gain where I can avoid it.

Feasable for some maybe. I'd find it jolly well hard living in some places and very easy in others. Eastern Europe, and heck, a lot of Europe is difficult (if you don't have access to a kitchen).

I've ended up stranded in parts of the UK, where about the only option on the menu is to eat chips and salad. That gets a little boring. In Scotland I was even served powdered potato mash! In Italy I was constantly subject to ridicule. At least near the med there are vegetable options.

On the flip side, to many Indians, "vegetarian" means egg-free, though oddly, it may include fish dishes.

The special treatment of fish varies across parts of India, but the concept that eggs are non-vegetarian is fairly standard there (to a lesser extent abroad).

That might be true for people who hail from certain coastal communities (like Bengal, Orissa, etc.) but more often than not, "Vegetarian" means No eggs, No Fish, No meat.

> That might be true for people who hail from certain coastal communities (like Bengal, Orissa, etc.)

Right, the fish part is mostly in areas where fish is already a staple of the diet.

My point was that "vegetarian" for many Indians is similar to "vegan" in that it proscribes eggs (though not always dairy).

I personally use the term 'pure vegetarian'.

There are 250+ vegetarian restaurants and stores in London:

http://www.happycow.net/disp_results_address.php?distance=15...

EDIT: London also has a vibrant vegetarian culture with many veggie groups. For instance, there's a very nice meetup group with almost 2000 people that convene regularly: http://www.meetup.com/vegetarian-419/

And a vegan meetup group: http://www.meetup.com/londonvegan/

If you want famous vegetarians:

http://vegan.wikia.com/wiki/Famous_Vegans_and_Vegetarians

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vegetarians

EDIT: Wow, even Bill Clinton is vegan now: http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-08-2013/bill-...

Thanks for your comments; I'm glad you liked it. I'm adding places that I know & have eaten at, so the data is a little more sparse than it will be. I'm also going to add more "high street" places; I'd like it to be a resource that answers several questions:

* Where can I go for a nice vegetarian/vegan meal? * Where can I go for a nice meal that doesn't exclude my veggie friend? * I'm at place X and I'm starving. Where can I get something vegan to eat nearby?

Personally, I think that London is awesome for veggies & vegans. There's at least 10 specifically vegetarian restaurants that are really nice, and many other hole-in-the-wall places that aren't good for dates but are still serving good food. More and more high street chains are vegan-friendly. More and more places are specifically marking vegan-friendly dishes on their menu. (I also think that the reason that Mildred's has a young, vibrant clientele is because of its location in the heart of Soho, rather than because it's vegetarian.)

My aim isn't to change attitudes towards veganism or vegetarianism; my aim is to make it more accessible. I want to help the newly-vegan person who doesn't know that they can get a quick snack from Wasabi. I want to help the manager who's got a vegetarian staff member and is trying to find somewhere nice for the Christmas meal. And I'm trying to help veggies throughout London find new places to eat, in areas of London that they're not going to be so familiar with.

Wasabi's tofu curry and rice is to die for.

You are missing quite a few vegetarian only restaurants. There are three I thought of immediately: The Gate in Hammersmith. or that place on Drummond St near Euston station (Diwani?) Rasa in Stoke Newington. All are well known enough to have had a write up in Time Out at some point.

I'm missing The Gate in Hammersmith, and the one on Drummond Street, but Rasa's definitely on there: http://nopudding.com/london/rasa-stoke-newington-42

I'll try to add more places this weekend. Thanks for the reports!

I find a good way of discovering more of a particular type of restaurant is to look it up on FourSquare and then take a look at the lists it appears on.

For those not familiar, the pudding in the domain name referring to a few kinds of sausage in England/Ireland (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding )

It might also be a Pink Floyd reference ("you can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat")

Actually, it's a reference to a Pink Floyd song. :)

@creature

What do the coloured markers represent? You are missing some info from your key.

Could you also add some help text to the key? As in how you define vegan/veggie/vegan-friendly.

How about providing a method whereby people can suggest other places? Perhaps for you to go and sample their wares at a later date.

I think you could squeeze in more info into your pop-ups. It's annoying going back and forth.

You are missing some direct links to websites (tibits).

If you hover over markers near the top of the map the popups are lost.

Slow on my 1.4 mb line.

Personally I think it would be better to use a frame like approach, especially for those with the real estate. Click on a marker, get the text in a side column.

My 2p.

Nice project. Sadly no new places to me (yet!) but glad to see the Loving Hut, this is a must.

Are you going to add functionality for submissions? Or did I just miss it?

Loving Hut is pretty creepy. I sincerely appreciate being able to find veg/vegan food in a lot of cities and countries, but the idea of supporting the Supreme Master situation (I hesitate to call it a cult, but I struggle to find a better word) is pretty distasteful. From online stories and friends' personal anecdotes, I'd rather steer clear and go hungry.

Some links I plucked from Google:

- http://www.humanewatch.org/the_murky_sea_of_cult_money/

- http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2011-06-02/news/critics-claim...

- http://thechinghaicult.blogspot.com/

Fair enough - someone was telling me about the Supreme Master thing recently, must admit I had largely ignored it up until that point as just part of the bizarre Loving Hut experience. Thanks for the links, definitely some food for thought!

I’m not religious at all, but I’ve eaten in some religious-based restaurants such as Harikrishna, adventist, and buddhist. And to be honest, I don't find it creepier than any other religion/cult.

I used to go all the time to a Loving Hut in Chinatown (San Francisco) and got friendly with the staff. They never mentioned religion or tried to convince me to join their religion/cult. I would be annoyed if they tried to push their religion on me, but instead, they seemed interested in promote vegetarianism and veganism. On a side note, this Chinatown branch has the best vegan Pho I ever had.

We have a loving hut nearby (Brighton, UK), and I can't say that I was particularly taken with the menu. I'm not even sure if I'd class it as food and I'm a champion for veganism!

The quality of their branches doesn’t seem to be consistent. For instance, they have a branch in Palo Alto that is a cafe where they reheat food prepared in advance. The food in this branch is kind of meh. I guess that is one of the reasons I didn’t fell compelled (yet) to go to any branch in London (where I leave now). There’s good (and cheap) vegetarian food everywhere in London!

I ate at their Camden branch once and it was pretty good, but the Holloway Road branch experience was kind of revolting.

Good to know, I'll check the Camden branch.

What the hell is up with the end of the Phoenix New Times article? There's incomplete sentences and stuff copy-pasted from the beginning. It's like the writer forgot to finish it and the editor never looked at it.

I noticed the "Omnivorous" check box, but clicking it doesn't show that many more places - I assumed omnivorous would mean something along the lines of: every pub, restaurant, and shop in London. Apparently not, so, can somebody explain what being an "omnivore" as a lifestyle choice (or whatever) means in this day and age?

I'm planning to add more omnivorous places that do an OK job of catering to veggies. Particularly places like East Street, near Oxford Street. It's not a vegetarian restaurant, but it's got vegan options clearly marked on the menu and all the staff seem pretty switched on. My goal is to help people find places where their veggie friends can have a good meal easily, without lots of explanation to the staff about what they do and don't eat.

Thanks for taking the time to explain it :)

I think almost every restaurant in London would be considered "vegetarian friendly", at least by US standards. No matter where I went, there were multiple options clearly marked on the menu. It's the easiest place I've ever visited food-wise.

Perhaps "vegan friendly" places is harder though, I don't know.

http://VegGuide.org provides a REST API that you could combine with this data. See http://www.vegguide.org/site/api-docs for details.

A friend of mine was looking for this or was thinking of building a site based on this. Very cool idea! awesome I can see a lot of people using it.

It's a great start. I'd love to contribute some places (around EC1) that I frequent if you take suggestions?

Happy to take suggestions! Let me know what I've missed.

Insta spotted bug. Toggling 'Show brands' the number increases every time.

Awesome stuff mate, Ill post this on www.fb.com/yumveganrecipes if thats cool?

Totally cool! Please spread the word far and wide. :)

Awesome set up.

Are there any open source solutions that allow me to do this for my city? Simple execution, mobile ready - add locations and reviews along with 'find places nearby' ?

Nice! Very useful, thank you :)

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