Well, looking just got a whole lot easier with this month's launch of VegPA.net, a site that makes searching for veggie eats around here a piece of carrot cake.
In a couple of clicks, you can find restaurants or groceries close by. Pulldown options focus searches on Pennsylvania towns (e.g., Ardmore, Jenkintown, Media) or Philadelphia neighborhoods (e.g., South Philly, Northern Liberties). Besides hours, directions, Web links, and other usual, useful data, each entry (there are more than 300) describes what kind of non-meat options are available there, with occasional asides about the quality of the food.
With a list of not just "veggie" sites but sites that serve veggie food, it immediately becomes apparent there are a lot more great veggie options out there than we might have guessed.
I don't mean default items like salad, pasta marinara or - shudder - eggplant. Hey, even veggie burgers and wraps are commonplace now, and that's fine. I'm talking about serious alternatives - stuff like vegan meatloaf (Belgian Cafe, Center City), spicy tofu sandwiches (Tap Room, South Philadelphia), vegan BLTs (Mugshots, Manayunk), seitan cheesesteaks (Abbaye, North 3rd Street), vegan chicken cheesesteak (Verree Express Pizza, Northeast) and even vegan chocolate shakes (Viva Las Vegans in West Philly).
VegPA.net's candid descriptions and commentary provide these and other useful factoids. How else would we learn that Steve's Steaks on South Street is a "typical steak place except they also serve a vegan Philly steak sandwich for $6," or that the Nile Cafe in Germantown has "healthy Southern cuisine [and] also holds many educational workshops"?
