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Rynel Luo and Amanda Zhu
WELCOME TO MEATLESS MONDAYS
The best vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Philadelphia
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Reducing your carbon footprint is as easy as going one day without consuming meat. Eating just one less burger is the equivalent of taking your car off the road for 320 miles. However, we understand that moving to a new city and finding a new routine can be difficult. Lucky for you, Philadelphia has great vegetarian and vegan restaurant options. In order to help you find the best restaurants in your new city, we've used HappyCow and Yelp to break down all the places you can go to enjoy an eco-friendly day of consumption spanning breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
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VEGETARIAN AND VEGAN RESTAURANTS IN PHILADELPHIA
We used data from HappyCow to map out strictly vegetarian and vegan restaurants across Philadelphia.
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ALL VEGETARIAN/VEGAN RESTAURANTS
This map shows where every vegetarian or vegan restaurant from HappyCow is located across Philadelphia. In general, the darker circles (representing restaurants with higher average prices) seem to line up with neighborhoods that have higher per capita income. More specifically, Rittenhouse Square, Queens Village, Center City, and South Street are the most affluent areas in Philadelphia, as well as the areas with more vegetarian and vegan restaurants. Restaurant owners likely understand that those who are willing to spend more on healthy and high quality food options may be centered in these neighborhoods. The additional two maps in this gallery separate the restaurants into vegetarian or vegan, and similar observations can be seen.
YELP VS. HAPPYCOW REVIEWS
It is interesting to note that HappyCow users and Yelp users tend to have different opinions on vegetarian/vegan restaurants. HappyCow is a platform geared towards those with dietary restrictions, making it easier for users to find restaurants that accommodate their preferences when in a new area. Thus, most of the users tend to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. In contrast, Yelp is used frequently by the general public, in which most people eat meat. Overall, HappyCow users tend to give higher ratings to vegetarian/vegan restaurants. Perhaps Yelp users found these restaurants to have less appealing menu options or more bland entrees.
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VEGAN VS. VEGETARIAN
The graph on the left reiterates the fact that HappyCow users tend to have more favorable opinions about vegetarian/vegan restaurants in comparison to that of Yelp users. It is also important to note that HappyCow users tend to have more strict dietary restrictions, while Yelp users do not. This may be a reason why Yelp users have lower ratings on average, given that they may perceive these restaurants as having less options, or more bland food. Additionally, it looks like vegan restaurants are a bit more pricey than vegetarian restaurants, which makes sense seeing as they generally have better ratings and possibly better quality food.
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WHERE SHOULD A MEAT-LOVER TRY FIRST?
Most Popular Vegetarian Restaurants by Number of Yelp Reviews
As non-vegetarians, we understand that restaurants from HappyCow may be intimidating because they are strictly for vegetarians/vegans and do not provide any meat options. However, we've selected the top restaurants that a meat-lover would be most likely to also enjoy, by looking at the corresponding number of reviews on Yelp. Vedge, HipCityVeg, and Charlie Was a Sinner are the top three vegetarian or vegan restaurants that are also popular among the general population, and may be a more likely spot for non-vegetarians to enjoy!
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RESTAURANTS BY CUISINE
In case someone is craving a specific type of food, we also created an interactive map on Tableau that allows the user to quickly identify vegetarian/vegan restaurants by type of cuisine. The two screenshots below show the maps of the restaurants categorized as “Italian/Pizza” (left) and “American" (right). If you are craving vegetarian Italian/Pizza, you will unfortunately have limited options, given that this is the least popular type of vegetarian cuisine in Philadelphia, with only three locations. In contrast, the most popular type of cuisine for vegetarian/vegan restaurants in Philadelphia is American.
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MEATLESS MONDAYS
Recommendations for Penn Students
For Penn students who wish to eat healthier and more sustainably, we recommend 3 restaurants for each meal to try for a Meatless Monday. These restaurants were chosen based on their proximity to campus for a specific time of day, their price range (generally cheaper for students), as well as higher ratings.
BREAKFAST
Many students have class in the morning, so there is not a lot of time to venture far off campus to grab a bite to eat for breakfast. We defined restaurants as breakfast-friendly if they open before 11am. HipCityVeg in University City is the closest choice, and if you don't mind the walk, Greens and Grains and P.S. and Co., both in Rittenhouse Square, are decently priced options with 4 stars.
LUNCH
We marked restaurants as open for lunch if they were open from 11am-4pm. There is usually a bit more time during the lunch hour, so students are able to explore further into Center City. Check out 20th Street Pizza and Samosa Vegetarian for highly rated (4.5) and budget-friendly options, or for those in a crunch, Goldie at Penn Food Hall will hit the spot.
DINNER
After 5pm, which is what we determined as a good metric for dinner, Penn students are typically more free. Most students are done with classes for the day, meaning they have more time to discover new neighborhoods and new restaurants. Some people also willing to spend more on dinner than other meals. Our first recommendation is Queen & Rock Game Cafe in Queen Village, a plant-based board game spot that is well worth the trek due to its 5 star rating. For a fine dining experience, try the popular Vedge in Center City. Finally, if you are looking for inexpensive vegetarian dim sum, check out Unit Su Vege in the Art Museum District.
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DATA SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS
We scraped HappyCow and Yelp for our Tableau visualizations using the Web Scraper Chrome extension. HappyCow is an online service listing restaurants that are strictly vegetarian or vegan (not just vegetarian-friendly or vegan-friendly) in an area. It is very popular among those with dietary restrictions, and we were interested in how HappyCow users rated restaurants and the restaurants' category tags. We also used Yelp data to gather information on neighborhoods, ratings, reviews, hours, and price-range. All data was cleaned using Excel and Tableau Prep, and we also used Tableau Prep to merge the two datasets. The combination of these two data sources allowed us to understand which restaurants both vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike would be most likely to enjoy. Additionally, check out the links below for more interesting articles related to mindful consumption!
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