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Comment by creature | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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