Miami is a tropical paradise replete with natural abundance. Our trees don’t just bear coconuts, either. From mangoes and mamey to avocados, papaya and jackfruit, these fertile lands combined with all that sunshine and rain give us more than we probably deserve, honestly.
Outside of the city, local farms around Miami grow entire rainbows of fruits and veggies year-round. This is all to say, Miami has the ingredients to be a vegan or vegetarian’s heaven on earth. And in reality, it is! A new study has just ranked Miami the 8th best city in the country for plant-based eats.
Personal finance platform WalletHub set out to analyze which cities across the country cater best to vegetarians and vegans—a demo that comprises around 6% of adults in the U.S., or 15.7 million people. To determine the best and cheapest places for a plant-based diet, they compared the 100 largest cities across 17 key indicators, including cost of groceries, share of restaurants serving meatless options and number of salad shops per capita.
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We weren’t exactly surprised to see that Miami cracked the top 10, especially considering how many amazing vegetarian and vegan restaurants we have here. In fact, it would seem that the entire state of Florida is pretty friendly to alternative diets, with a total of six Florida cities ranking in the top 100.
Though if you really want to spread your plant-based wings in the Sunshine State, you might want to move to Orlando, which ranked as the No. 2 best city in the U.S. for vegans and vegetarians. The No. 1 spot went to Los Angeles, the land of Erewhon, where citizens graze beautifully curated aisles of sea moss gels, kelp noodles and paleo granolas (we imagine).
Curious to see how other cities stacked up? Check out the top 20 below, and click through for WalletHub’s full analysis on the best cities for vegans and vegetarians in the U.S.
The best cities for vegans and vegetarians in the U.S.
| Overall Rank |
City | Total Score | Affordability Rank | Diversity, Accessibility & Quality Rank | Vegetarian Lifestyle Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Los Angeles, CA | 61.26 | 13 | 17 | 4 |
| 2 | Orlando, FL | 60.60 | 25 | 3 | 11 |
| 3 | Portland, OR | 59.63 | 44 | 5 | 6 |
| 4 | San Diego, CA | 58.08 | 18 | 4 | 26 |
| 5 | Seattle, WA | 56.68 | 93 | 6 | 3 |
| 6 | Austin, TX | 55.96 | 6 | 12 | 41 |
| 7 | San Francisco, CA | 55.65 | 100 | 1 | 1 |
| 8 | Miami, FL | 55.59 | 79 | 2 | 53 |
| 9 | Phoenix, AZ | 54.11 | 14 | 14 | 82 |
| 10 | Tampa, FL | 53.92 | 43 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | New York, NY | 53.74 | 28 | 8 | 28 |
| 12 | Washington, DC | 53.29 | 90 | 7 | 5 |
| 13 | Oakland, CA | 53.17 | 94 | 34 | 7 |
| 14 | Las Vegas, NV | 51.47 | 15 | 15 | 40 |
| 15 | Chicago, IL | 51.42 | 22 | 24 | 14 |
| 16 | Atlanta, GA | 49.56 | 50 | 16 | 19 |
| 17 | Madison, WI | 49.36 | 67 | 18 | 8 |
| 18 | Houston, TX | 49.23 | 5 | 54 | 32 |
| 19 | Sacramento, CA | 49.08 | 30 | 25 | 50 |
| 20 | San Antonio, TX | 48.45 | 9 | 44 | 84 |
Looking for more natural abundance? Peep our picks for the best pumpkin patches in Miami