Veganism in Reading

Guide to Vegan Eating in Reading, Berkshire, UK

At the Reading Animal Rights Group meeting last week it was mentioned that someone had the idea of producing a Guide to Vegan Restaurants in Reading. This is something I'd find extremely useful, so I'm going to go ahead with it. It is more appealing to me to go and ask difficult-for-them-to-answer questions before I ever try and eat there.

I'm not certain if my ideas match with the original one, but unfortunately the person who made the suggestion originally hasn't contacted the group since.

What I'd like to produce

Development of an in depth database on all significant eating establishments in the Reading area, extending to availability of difficult-to-source ingredients for home cooking.

Such a database would include information on each establishment such as

• Name
• Address
• Directions
• Telephone number
• Opening Hours
• Category (Restaurant, Pub, Cafe...)
• Sub-Category (Chinese, Indian, American...)
• Expense Range
• Online Information from the Establishment
• Credit Cards accepted
• Vegan items of note
• Vegetarian items of note
• Kitchen behaviour (Dairy kept away from non-dairy. I don't know what the official position with regards to Health And Safety is on this, but I imagine unless the staff are actively aware of veganism it wouldn't be something important to them. Also what are things fried in ? Same oil as non vegan ?)
• Reviews

Hopefully the end result will be available in printed form (if we can find sponsorship !) and online. The online database will be accessible via a standard web interface, an AvantGo version for thin-clients such as Palm Pilots and a WAP interface for even thinner clients. All online systems will obviously provide search facilities on all fields. I'd like to produce a PDF version too, but that depends on how the yet-to-be-found sponsor feels.

A domain name might be nice, too.