The World is your oyster, even if you don't eat oysters...

I truly love when I find other people that share my interests. I mean, who doesn't, right?

Tonight I found out about a really cool website that gives you short lists of vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurants and food shops, not only in every one of the 50 U.S. states, but ALL OVER THE WORLD! The site is just a little over 10 years old, and has over 10,000 listings!

So everyone check out vegdining.com!

Now this site may not be the only one of its kind, but I can offer it a particular vote of confidence based on experience. I looked up the restaurants listed for my state, the great state of Rhode Island, and I have been to at least 6 of the 10 restaurants/food shops on the list. The good news is that I would absolutely recommend those places to veg(etari)ans who were here and wanted to eat well. I mean, the list is by no means comprehensive - how could it be? - but it's a fine start.

The potential drawback of this site is that all you can see for free is the name of the restaurant and its general location (city/town). In order to access the full information available on the site, such as full restaurant profiles, restaurant recipes, and customer reviews, you must purchase an account. An account costs a not unreasonable $4.95 per year. And if you do any traveling within the year, that $5 may beyond pay for itself in saved starvation/aggravation. Plus, it could be really fun making the vegetarian restaurant circuit part of your travels.

Additionally, vegdining.com offers the option of the Vegdining card, which one could purchase to get worldwide discounts at participating veggie-friendly restaurants from Russia to Costa Rica. And you can earn rewards points for using the card too. Not really sure what these points add up to, but vegdining.com suggests that we could contact the site directly for further information about these cards.

But the main point is get out there and get eating. And if you've had a good experience with a restaurant you've found on vegdining.com, please let us know here.

Happy eating everyone!