HappyCow App: Guide to Veggie Restaurants Around the World

December 26, 2016 By Joseph Hostetler

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Y’all know I love good vegetarian food. So Million Miles Secrets reader Karey suggested I take a look at the HappyCow app. It helps you find vegetarian and vegan restaurants in over 175 countries around the world.

I’ll show you how the app works. And help you decide if you’d find it useful.

Review of the Happy Cow App

Link: HappyCow App for Android

Link: HappyCow App for iOS

With the HappyCow app, you can search for vegan and vegetarian restaurants (and those with vegan and vegetarian options) all over the world!

There’s a paid and free version for Android. But there’s only a paid version for Apple devices. But both paid versions costs ~$4, which is reasonable if you’ll use it often.

This app can save you time while traveling, especially if you’re on a vegan or vegetarian diet. Because it’s one of the few apps specifically dedicated to finding veggie restaurants.

In fact, I only found one other app, Vegman, that offers something similar.

And while the same information can be found on Yelp or TripAdvisor, it’s not as easy and simple to search for vegan and vegetarian restaurants. Because they don’t offer as many search options, or a straightforward way to search ONLY for vegetarian or vegan restaurants.

Using the HappyCow App

If you have the free version of the app, an ad will show-up that you will have to close.

Here’s the app’s main page:

If you let the app to detect your location, you can find ALL vegetarian and vegan restaurants (and those that offer vegetarian and vegan options) nearby, by tapping “See Everything Nearby”. And the app will show the restaurants based on your distance.

But if you’re only looking for vegan restaurants, for example, just tap the “Vegan” button to isolate those.

You can also use the app’s search feature to find restaurants in any city or zip code. This could be handy for planning advance reservations for upcoming travel plans.

To do this, click “NEARBY“ in the top left-hand corner of the app. Then click “SEARCH” in the dropdown menu.

You can narrow your search by aspects like location, “veg-type” (i.e. vegan, vegetarian, veg-options), distance from your search location, search radius, price, ratings, and more.

I searched for vegan restaurants within 5 miles of Los Angeles, and here’s what I found:

The app returned 18 vegan restaurants. It shows whether the restaurant is open, how far away it is, a rating, and how expensive the food is.

If you click on one of the restaurants in the list, you’ll be directed to more detailed information. Like the restaurant’s phone number, address, hours, reviews, and customer photos, along with links to the restaurant’s website and social media page (if available).

Million Mile Secrets team member Scott was interested to know if Cafe Lola Rosa in Montreal showed up on the HappyCow app. Because when he went to Montreal with a few vegetarian & vegan friends, they loved that particular restaurant!

So I searched through HappyCow, and it was there!

I also did a search for 2 restaurants I enjoyed on my trip to Queens in New York, Sri Pra Phai and Upi Jaya. I found Sri Pra Phai but didn’t see Upi Jaya.

That said, there were hundreds of options when I used the app to search Queens, New York. So it likely shows a majority of the veggie restaurants available!

Are There Drawbacks?

To use all the app’s features, you must download the paid version.

With the paid version, you’ll be able to do things like save restaurant listings to view offline later (which can come in handy when traveling!), search with more keywords, and search without ads.

So if it’s an app you think you’ll use a lot, it’s probably worth paying ~$4 for the paid version.

And it would be nice if there were a free version for Apple users, because I like to test out apps before I buy them.

Bottom Line

The HappyCow app lets you search for vegan and vegetarian restaurants (and restaurants with vegan and vegetarian options) in over 175 countries!

I found it very easy to use. And liked that there were so many ways to filter your search, by criteria like distance from your current location, distance from a particular city or zip code, search radius, and price.

Have you used the HappyCow app? What did you think?

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