From cntraveller.in
London holds steady, Amsterdam slips, and Ho Chi Minh City rockets up the rankings in HappyCow’s latest list of vegan-friendly cities
Something about cardboard burgers or undressed salads, and you have yourself a perfectly serviceable vegan joke. But for plant-based eaters, travelling truly does come in tow with all those things, turning what was supposed to be a stress-free vacation into a tedious hunt for something (anything) to eat. In 1999, HappyCow began as a public service platform to assist vegans and vegetarians in finding real food on the road and now, with 25 years and 210 countries' worth of plant-based intel under its belt, it just released its annual list of the 25 most vegan-friendly cities.
The ranking goes beyond restaurants to include food trucks, cafés, bakeries, grocery shops, and B&Bs. Each city is evaluated for the number of these vegan establishments, their density per capita, the growth of listings since last year. These numbers go hand in hand with a qualitative assessment to consider how easy it is to eat vegan and how well it is understood locally. At a quick glance, though it is clear that the vegan restaurant count has dipped in some places, the broader picture shows a sharp uptick in cities offering vegan options that are far from the sad plate of lettuce that typically comes to mind.
London remains at the top of the list, smug as ever, with 154 fully vegan restaurants in the city centre alone, not to mention 3,620 total vegan-friendly listings across its sprawl. That’s more than enough to support an entire lifestyle of alt cheese and cashew aioli, plus a few vegan B&Bs for good measure. Veganism here is no longer subculture, it’s just lunch.
Further down in the top 10s, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Portland continue to hold their ground, even as some former favourites (Paris and Amsterdam among them) slid down the ranks. Amsterdam lost 21 vegan restaurants but remains in the conversation at 4th place unlike Paris which dropped out of the top 10 entirely. On the rise: Los Angeles clawed its way back into the top 3, shoring up its wellness-world credibility with 2515 vegan venues, while New York City and Mexico City broke into the top 10 this year, the latter for the first time ever.
Ho Chi Minh City, most notably, has arrived. The Vietnamese city made its first-ever appearance, landing in the top ten with the kind of numbers that suggest this isn’t a fluke: a 33% increase in fully vegan restaurants, and a 41% rise in vegan businesses overall. This makes it the fastest-growing vegan city of the moment, and the only Asian city to crack the top 10. However, others are not too far behind: Tokyo came in at 12, Bangkok at 14, Taipei at 18, and Singapore at 19, each with steadily growing options, even if the shift toward dedicated vegan venues is more incremental.
The most vegan-friendly cities, based on HappyCow’s data.
- London, UK
- Berlin, Germany
- Los Angeles, USA
- Portland, USA
- Lisbon, Portugal
- Barcelona, Spain
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Mexico City, Mexico
- New York City, USA
- Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- Warsaw, Poland
- Tokyo, Japan
- Porto, Portugal
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Paris, France
- San Francisco, USA
- Taipei, Taiwan
- Singapore, Singapore
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Hamburg, Germany
- Madrid, Spain
- Vienna, Austria
- Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Munich, Germany
