From Boston to Saudi, Vegan Eateries Are Showing How Delicious Compassion Can Be

Something that always excites me is seeing awesome, thriving vegan businesses that appeal not only to the vegan community but also to the general not-yet(!)-vegan public, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that vegan food is as delicious as it is compassionate. And I want to give a quick shout-out to two that have launched this year, with much yummy success.

First, we'll head to Boston. Regular readers may recall from this summer's Great Whole Foods Cheese-and-Apple-Pie Adventure that I had my first Daiya pizza in the company of some friends at the AR conference, including my pal Eric, who referred to his gobbling up of the good stuff as "research" -- for what a few months later became the best thing to hit Boston's food scene in a long time: Peace o' Pie, an all-vegan, all-awesome pizza joint about which I've heard nothing but praise since it opened up. But though hearing vegans rave about it -- about everything from the quality of the pizza to the welcoming atmosphere to the eager, friendly staff -- was great, what I really loved was seeing the Boston Globe tell the world that there is "no sacrifice needed" to have amazing, delicious, cruelty-free vegan food. Indeed, when there are even vegan pizza places as good as -- if not better than -- any joints offering pies full of suffering, people quickly start running out of excuses not to ditch the cow's-milk cheese. Move over, vegan cupcakes. It may be time for vegan pizza to take over the world.

But pizza joints aren't the only vegan food businesses rapidly popping up. Vegan bakeries full of comforting smells and sugary goodness are spreading too -- wherever you live. Cities such as San Francisco and New York and D.C. are the usual suspects, of course, but one of the newest vegan bakeries is far from these locales: in Saudi Arabia. If you're among those who regularly drool over the Friday Food roundups, you've seen the Voracious Vegan's recipes and photos appear there regularly. And I was uber-excited for her a couple months ago when I learned that she was moving beyond cooking & baking just for herself and her husband (and sharing yummy recipes with us) to opening up her own bakery, Voracious, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. I don't have any plans to visit Saudi, but oh, do her scrumptious photos (including the one above) make me wish I could.