The Bruges Vegan is ten years old today! Woohoo 🙂
From 3 vegan restaurants in Belgium to …
When I went vegan in 2009-2010, there were less than a handful of vegan restaurants in Belgium. There was Komkommertijd in Ghent, De Graankorel in Oostende (yes, it was all vegan since somewhere in the 90’s) and I think the Loving Hut in Leuven opened somewhere in 2010. Unfortunately, all 3 of them have meanwhile closed, but luckily the number of vegan restaurants in Belgium has grown steadily in those years! I can’t keep up anymore 😉 According to Happy Cow, Belgium now has 76 vegan restaurant listings and nearly 1500 restaurants with vegan options.
In 2013, there was even no restaurant in Bruges that had vegan options standardly or explicitly available on the menu. So I started contacting local restaurants, asking them whether they had any vegan options, and if not, whether they would make a vegan menu if we made a reservation. Some replied positive, others just bluntly say no (see my post ‘vegans not welcome‘), and others just didn’t bother to reply at all.
I document this on the lists of restaurants: one list for Bruges and onelist for restaurants outside of Bruges, which have grown nicely over the years!
Here’s a gallery of some recent restaurant visits. Some are real fine gastronomic dining, but we also enjoy the occasional burger or falafel!
I also want to take a moment to stress that all my reviews are my independent own personal opinion, based on my own visits. If I liked it, I will write that, if there are points that need improvement, I will also mention it, as diplomatically as I can 😉 (See also A critical note about vegan (friendly) restaurants? Don’t you dare!).
I pride myself in not being called ‘an influencer’, as some social media figures are nowadays labelled. By not wanting to be called an influencer, I mean: I don’t get paid or sponsored in any way. I am not an advertising platform. I do like to think that my writings ‘influence’ people, changing their thoughts about veganism and animal rights for the better 😉
And plenty of other things!
Some stats. In those ten years of The Bruges Vegan …
- I posted 631 posts
- of which 406 posts are restaurant reviews! (of which nearly 100 of restaurants in Bruges and about 300 of restaurants outside Bruges).
So there are also hundreds of posts on other topics on this blog 😉 About the presentations I gave at the International Animal Rights Conference, about animals in society, veganic agriculture, shop reviews (I stopped doing those because I couldn’t keep up anymore), etc. So please do check out the menu if you think I only write about restaurants 😉
Another 10 years?
To another 10 more years of The Bruges Vegan?
I really don’t know.
I like having this independent archive, documenting my restaurant visits and having my own place to share my thoughts about animal rights and veganism.
The many food pics and restaurant reviews are also a great way to show people that veganism is accessible and getting easier by the day. I hope that my blogs and presentations about veganism and animal rights can inspire people to go vegan, or inspire or strenghten other vegans, animal rights activisits in their activism.
But maintaining this blog is also quite time consuming and – dealing with two auto-immune disease – my time is already quite limited, and I’m struggling …
I’ll see what the future brings! What I do know is that I will never give up on advocating for animal rights and veganism. In whatever way or form!
The Bruges Vegan 