Bay Area Vegetarians

Cha-Ya

Cha-Ya has closed their 9th Street restaurant in San Francisco, which opened last summer. You can still find their delicious Japanese vegan cuisine at the original Berkeley location and their Valencia location in San Francisco.

We need a math whiz to provide advice for the Ultimate Guide.  The Ultimate Guide (UG) is a database of San Francisco Bay Area restaurants providing vegan and vegetarian food in the SF Bay Area, as well as businesses owned by vegetarians.

The goal of UG is to promote eating veg by making it as simple as possible to find restaurants serving veg food.  To support the best restaurants based on your reviews, it creates the Top Ten list of veg restaurants.  This is currently a straight average (total number of points divided by number of reviews).

For example:
Millennium has 34 reviews and a rating (average) of 4.34
Udupi Palace has 9 reviews and a rating (average) of 4.33

We need a math whiz to help us create a formula that also reflects the number of reviews the restaurant has, as well, in the final rating.

And if you’ve got a website or blog or email signature, please link back to The Ultimate Guide – help us promote veg eating!

Thanks to Lisa for sharing this information with us from Cafe Gratitude’s weekly gratitude mailing:

Our cafe in the Sunset of San Francisco (on 9th avenue) is closing its doors in order to open the possibility of new and growing visions for Cafe Gratitude.  Our last day open in the Sunset district of San Francisco is Sunday, June 14th.

With closure of this location, Cafe Gratitude will still be operating raw foods restaurants at its inaugural SF location in the Mission, Berkeley, and Healdsburg.

The new business alluded to in the Cafe Gratitude update is a vegan Mexican restaurant (cooked foods) in the Mission .. and we’re all waiting for more news on that!

Cafe Soulstice, a raw foods restaurant that operated within the Equinox Gym in San Mateo, and subsequently expanded to Palo Alto, has closed both restaurants.  Thanks to Judy for the update.

There are now only three vegetarian restaurants on the Peninsula:

Que seRaw seRaw – raw foods “to go” in Burlingame
Loving Hut – Palo Alto cafe with soups, salads, sandwiches
Annapoorna – Indian restaurant in San Mateo

Other Peninsula vegetarian restaurants that have closed in recent years include Stoa’s (Palo Alto; they switched from being vegetarian to non-veg before they closed), Bay Leaf Cafe (Palo Alto) and Vegetarian Gourmet (San Mateo).

The lease for the Café Gratitude on 9th Ave. (near Irving) expires on May 1st. They may go month-to-month until a new tenant signs the lease. Once there is a new tenant, this location will close.

Ultimate Guide: Cafe Gratitude – read it, rate it, review it

Fragrance Land, a popular Chinese vegetarian restaurant in Cupertino, closed its doors, permanently, earlier this week, bring the number of vegan and vegetarian restaurants in the South Bay to 32. (Click here for list)

Thanks to Sharon, who hosted our monthly dinner at Fragrance Land, for the update.

Souley Vegan, which closed last September and planned to re-open by end of October after remodelling, has announced its restaurant serving vegan soul food will not be reopening at its current location due to the need for costly structural repairs which the business owners are unable to afford.  Still available for catering and at Lake Merritt Farmer’s Market.  No current date for expected new site opening if and when one is found.

Thanks to Bob for the update.

Ultimate Guide: Souley Vegan