UES Restaurant Named One Of Country's Best Vegetarian Spots

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Upper East Side restaurant that serves up tasty vegan dishes is getting national recognition as one of the country's best vegetarian eateries.

Candle 79, located on 79th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues, was one of seven New York City restaurants to be named in OpenTable's list of the 50 best vegetarian restaurants in America. The reservation booking service released its list Tuesday and based its rankings off of more than 12 million user reviews.

Reviews for more than 30,000 vegetarian restaurants were analyzed, meaning Candle 79 beat out a ton of competition to earn a spot on the list. Much of that competition came from restaurants close to home for the Upper East Side vegan spot.

Six other Manhattan eateries made OpenTable's list including:

• Delice & Sarrasin, Greenwich Village
• Dirt Candy, Lower East Side
• Divya's Kitchen, East Village
• Double Zero, East Village
• Nix, Greenwich Village
• Tamarind, Tribeca

Restaurants considered for OpenTable's rankings all received a minimum overall rating based off of a qualifying number of reviews from Aug. 1, 2018 to July 31 of this year. Eateries that met those criteria were then scored and sorted based on how many "tags" they had for being vegan or having vegetarian options, according to the site.

Diners across the nation have shown a heightened appetite for meatless meals, OpenTable says. The number of reviews on the site including the phrase "plant-based" have increased 200% since 2017, according to a news release.

"There's no doubt that plant-based dining is a trend as we're seeing increasing interest in vegetarian menu options from our diners," Caroline Potter, OpenTable's chief dining officer, said in a statement.

Patch's Noah Manskar contributed to this report.

See OpenTable's full list of America's best vegetarian restaurants here.