Community Spotlight

Inside Virginia's Vegan Scene with The Southern Vegan

At VegFest Expo, Vegans Explore founder Sean A. Russell reconnects with Dante, the creator behind The Southern Vegan, for a look at what is happening in Richmond, Virginia's vegan food scene.

Vegans Explore Podcast

Episode 36 · Dec 6, 2025 · 13 min

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A City on the Rise

Dante talks through Richmond's growing base of plant-based restaurants and the community forming around them, pointing to Blue Atlas as a standout spot worth the trip. The conversation reinforces a theme Vegans Explore keeps running into on tour: strong vegan scenes are popping up outside the usual coastal hot spots, often without much national attention.

Documenting the South, One City at a Time

As The Southern Vegan, Dante has built a following around spotlighting Southern vegan food culture specifically, work that lines up closely with what Vegans Explore is trying to do on a bigger scale: give smaller vegan communities the visibility that bigger cities already take for granted.