How we know a place serves vegan food

The two labels

A venue is either fully vegan, meaning the whole menu is yours and you can order anything on it, or it has vegan options, meaning the kitchen cooks vegan food alongside the rest of what it serves. Anything we hold no claim about is not yet known, and it stays out of the guides until there is one.

Today that is 49,223 places across 269 city guides, of which 3,771 are fully vegan kitchens. Those figures are read live from the same database the guides are built from, so this page moves when they do.

Where a status comes from

Nearly all of them were recorded by a local mapper in public map data: somebody who knows the place tagged it as vegan, or as serving vegan food, and that tag is what we carry. It is an ordinary, checkable act by a named contributor, and it is the licensed source the footer credits on every page of this site.

A small remainder we inferred ourselves, from a venue’s own listing or menu categories, with no human check. Those pages say so in prose rather than hiding it behind the same badge. If a page does not say a status was inferred, a mapper recorded it.

Members can add a place too, and adding one is itself the claim that it serves vegan food. That path is new and small, and a venue page shows when a member is behind it.

What a status does not mean

It is not a visit, an inspection or a review. Nobody from Simmer List has been to most of these kitchens, and no page pretends otherwise. Read a status as a strong lead: it is what the best available public record says about a menu, on the day that record was last updated.

The same goes for anything we say about a diet. A kitchen recorded as catering for gluten-free eating is telling you it can cook for you, not that it runs a separate kitchen. If you are asking because of coeliac disease or an allergy, ring ahead.

What members add

On top of that, Simmer List members log visits, rate what they ate, save places into lists and mark dishes worth ordering. That is the layer with a person behind it, and it is small today. Where it exists you will see it on the venue’s page, attached to the member who wrote it. Where it does not, the page says what the map data says and stops there.

What we never do

• No paid placement. A venue cannot buy a listing, a position, or a badge, and there is no sponsored row anywhere on this site.
• No invented content. Every count, status and street on this site traces to a row in the database. If a page would need something made up to be good, we leave the space empty instead.
• No made-up reviews or ratings. A rating exists only when a member wrote one.

How often it is re-checked

A pass runs every week over the public map data behind the corpus. It takes in places that are new, hours and contact details that have changed, and venues that have been recorded as shut, which drop out of the guides on that pass. Separately we watch for the quieter kind of closure, where a restaurant stops trading and the map never hears about it. That one is harder, and some listings will outlive their kitchens.

What a venue page can and cannot tell you

Coverage is uneven, because the underlying record is. Around nine in ten of these places carry a kind of kitchen, about seven in ten a street address, roughly two thirds their opening hours, and about half a phone number or a website. A link to an actual menu is rare. A page prints what it holds and says nothing where it holds nothing, which is why some are much fuller than others.

If we have it wrong

Tell us and we will fix it. A place that has shut, a menu that has changed, a kitchen listed as fully vegan that is not: send us the details and name the venue and the city. Corrections to the underlying map data are welcome too, and they reach every service built on it rather than only this one.

Common questions

Has someone from Simmer List eaten at these places?

Almost never, and no page claims otherwise. A vegan status here comes from public map data or from a venue's own listing, not from a visit. Where a member has logged one, their rating and notes appear on the venue's page and you can see who wrote them.

What is the difference between fully vegan and has vegan options?

Fully vegan means the whole menu is yours, so you can order anything on it. Has vegan options means the kitchen cooks vegan food alongside the rest of its menu, and how much of the menu that covers varies from one dish to a whole section.

Can a listing be wrong?

Yes. Menus change, kitchens change hands, and a place can shut without anyone recording it. Treat a status as a strong lead rather than a guarantee, ring ahead when it matters, and tell us when you find one that is wrong.

Does a restaurant pay to appear on Simmer List, or to rank higher?

No. There is no paid placement, no sponsored row and no way to buy a position in a guide. Nothing on this site is for sale, and a venue appears because there is a row saying it serves vegan food.

How often is the data re-checked?

A pass runs every week over the public map data behind the corpus, taking in new venues, updated hours and contact details, and places recorded as shut. A venue marked closed drops out of the guides on that pass.

More about the project on the about page, or start browsing from the city guides.