About Vegetarian Guides

Why Veggie Guides?

Veganism is growing explosively. The vegan market is huge, yet largely ignored by the media and travel guides beyond a few token listings. We decided to do something about this.

How We Started

After working for a major travel publisher in the eighties, Alex Bourke set up Vegetarian Guides to make it easy for vegetarians and vegans to eat out and travel. Since 1991 he's travelled widely on five continents, working with vegan groups in each country to create an unrivalled research network.

Vegetarian Guides publications include London, Britain (currently out of print), and Paris. We also sell some vegan cookbooks by our own writers, and a new book The Vegan Guide about how to be vegan.

The Veggie Guides approach

We create vegan guides in partnership with the people best placed to research them, the coordinators and members of local and national vegan groups and organisations. They ensure that our books remain up to date and comprehensive. We tell you where to eat out, shop and sleep, whether you're a resident or a traveller.

We don't do inane reviews of a single dish on a long menu. Instead we list the most enticing vegan dishes with prices, and get as much info as we can from local vegans who eat there all the time. We don't judge. If a place isn't up to standard we leave it out. We figure if it's still open many people like it, so we give enough info for students to select the cheapest, couples to spot the ones with candles, and business travellers to know where to go to impress. Of course if a place delights everyone we might rave about it.

Our latest guidebook Vegan London Complete, now in full colour, is the seventh edition since we started and our biggest ever, at 800 pages! Which just shows how the vegan scene has exploded in London.

Our newest project

Published January 2021 was a new type of book for us The Vegan Guide: everything you need to embrace the world's fastest growing way of living by Alex Bourke & Ronny Worsey. This is the complete guide for new vegans, and their families. Learn during lockdown to make healthy vegan food at home, or use it as your handbook during Veganuary (at any time of year). 160 pages for only £5, the best-value book on going vegan anywhere.

You can help us to reach more people by spreading the word about Veggie Guides to your friends and recommending us to your local bookshop and library. We want to help as many people as possible to eat vegan food for the benefit of people, animals and the planet.

About The Editors

Alex Bourke is a former director, chair and national media spokesperson for The Vegan Society and has worked at UK vegan campaigning organisation Viva! He has published over 20 vegan books, 100 newspaper and magazine articles, and explained and debated veganism on radio and TV.
Alex to speak at World Vegetarian Congress in Brazil
A Vegan Activist Life story from the book Vegan Stories

From 2010 to 2018 Alex wrote the monthly restaurants page for Vegetarian Living magazine, Britain's biggest selling veggie/vegan magazine, and has contributed vegan travel features to newspapers and magazines including The Times, The Guardian, The Vegetarian, BBC Vegetarian Good Food, VegNews (USA), The Big Issue, New Vegetarian and Natural Health (Australia), Vegetarian World (Poland), helped countless journalists and researchers, and appeared on radio and tv many times in several countries.

Ronny Worsey has worked at UK vegan outreach organisation Animal Aid, and as a vegan chef and baker in restaurants from London to Edinburgh. She is a former director of The Vegan Society and creator of the Scoffer series of vegan cookbooks. She is currently studying a Law degree and finishing off her latest cookbook PlantCore.

Alex and Ronny work with several vegan co-authors around the UK, around 100 local and national vegan activists and group leaders throughout Britain and Europe, and hundreds of readers worldwide who contribute updates and new entries.

The Veggie Guides team can answer all your travel questions or put you in touch with a local vegan expert.

Paris resident, journalist and longtime vegan Aurelia d'Andrea is the author of Vegetarian Paris and a former travel editor of America's top newsstand vegan magazine VegNews.