The Vegan Guide to New York City [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I have been buying Rynn Berry's Vegan Guide since before I was a vegan; I own at least five previous editions of it, and it has grown - from a 50-page pamphlet to nearly 100 pages - with each successive edition. I call it incomparable because it's so far the only guide that concentrates exclusively on vegan restaurants and products.

Of course, the number, quality, and variety of vegan offerings in New York City has grown and continues to grow; Rynn was unable to include by press time certain vegetarian restaurants in this latest edition. It is arranged according to geographic area - naturally concentrating on Manhattan, which has the most restaurants of all the boroughs, never mind vegetarian restaurants. He also includes listings for restaurants in Brooklyn and Queens, although his "cutoff" is that he won't list restaurants that serve any meat or fish. Two notable omissions according to this rule are Souen, the venerable macrobiotic restaurant in Greenwich Village, and Chin Chin Palace in Staten Island, a conventional Chinese restaurant which nonetheless has a full page in its menu of excellent vegan dishes. There are, at this writing, only listings for Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens in the Guide, but that could very well change for the next edition.

The size (5.5 x 7.25) of the book makes it easy to carry along, which I failed to do on those instances I needed to know the address of the Candle Cafe (glowingly reviewed in the Vegan Guide); fortunately I fiinally got there. In this latest edition, there is more attention than ever paid to vegan products (bodycare, clothes, shoes); I saw an article yesterday stating that veganism was now a $2.8 billion-dollar market - no surprise there. People are slowly realizing that eating flesh is an increasingly risky proposition; plus, with designers like Stella McCartney and boutiques like MooShoes, it's trendier than ever to be a vegan.

I fully expect the size of the next edition to grow, and since all listings are updated whenever necessary - every edition is as up-to-date as it can be by press time. Certain restaurants have been removed from the Guide if they were included in early editions and became too "egregiously" non-vegetarian; in my neighborhood - the East Village - almost every restaurant wants to describe itself as "vegan-friendly," and I guess that if you serve plain tossed salad, you can be considered vegan-friendly, too.

I continue to buy this book every year because it always contains surprises for me, and it's a valuable reference tool. A lot of people buy it as a gift for their vegan friends, stating that "they're afraid to come to New York because they won't know where to eat." What could be more fun than a vegan eating tour? Count me in!