The VegNews annual reader survey in 2008 included options to select Toronto as your favourite vegetarian-friendly city and our Vegetarian Food Fair as best vegetarian event. According to VegNews: "By voting, you can choose today's most popular vegetarian people, places, and products. This is one of the magazine's most anticipated features, with winners announced in the 'Best of Vegetarian' holiday Nov/Dec edition of VegNews."

Favourites aside, which city is actually the most vegetarian-friendly?

A poll at HappyCow lists the top five as New York, San Francisco, London (England), Singapore and Portland (Oregon). Toronto is a runner up. A list at GoVeg.com shows the top five vegetarian-friendly cities in the U.S. as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Atlanta. They list the top four in Canada as Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto and Montreal.

Certainly Toronto has a lot going for it. We have the Annual Vegetarian Food Fair, the largest vegetarian event in North America. The city boasts several excellent organizations that promote vegetarianism, including us. There is also a huge variety of world cuisines available – our Vegetarian Directory lists 54 vegetarian restaurants (73 in the Greater Toronto Area).

Here is an analysis of the number of vegetarian restaurants per person in North American cities: 

Notes: Population stats are from Wikipedia. Number of restaurants are from HappyCow except we used our own more complete list for Toronto, Earthsave's thorough list for Vancouver and SuperVegan's long list for New York. The figures above are not for the greater population living beyond the cities.

Larger cities have one distinct advantage. They have the population to support a greater variety of vegetarian restaurants, including gourmet full-service places.

Of course, other parts of the world are strikingly more vegetarian than North America. HappyCow lists over 100 vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Singapore, a city of 4.5 million, and they report that in parts of Taiwan you can find a vegetarian restaurant or food stall on just about every street. In India (especial in the south) vegetarian restaurants are the norm. Restaurants that serve meat are in the minority and label themselves as "non-vegetarian."