How do you decide where to eat?

Most tools hand you a ranked list of thirty restaurants, which moves the work rather than doing it. Savor Scout takes your craving and location and returns one restaurant, showing its match score, what it beat, and the evidence behind the pick.

Yes. Searching is free, no app download is required, and you can run one search without creating an account.

How is Savor Scout different from Google Maps or Yelp?

Maps and Yelp are directories that rank everything and leave the deciding to you. Savor Scout makes the call. It reads menus and reviews for the specific dish you asked about rather than ranking places by overall star average, and it shows its reasoning. Its place data comes from the same public sources, so the difference is the selection, not the data.

Savor Scout › Eating out with a restriction › Jain

Eating out as a Jain

A Jain diet is vegetarian and also excludes root vegetables — onion, garlic, potatoes, carrots, ginger and others — as well as eggs and often honey. That rules out the base of most savoury cooking, so the kitchen has to know what it's doing.

Search Jain options near you →

What is Jain food?

Jain food follows the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence, toward all living beings. It is vegetarian, excludes eggs, and avoids root vegetables such as onion, garlic, potatoes, carrots and beets, because harvesting them kills the whole plant and the organisms in the soil. Many Jains also avoid honey and eating after sunset. Practice varies between individuals and families.

What actually goes wrong

Onion and garlic are in almost every savoury dish in almost every cuisine, including most Indian dishes. A vegetarian Indian restaurant is not automatically Jain-friendly, because its curry bases usually start with onion, garlic and ginger.

Potatoes are in samosas, dosa masala, many curries and nearly every side of fries. Carrots and beets are in many salads. Even sauces and stocks bought in by a restaurant often contain onion or garlic powder.

The good news is that many Indian vegetarian restaurants — especially Gujarati, Rajasthani and South Indian ones — offer Jain versions of dishes, prepared without root vegetables, if you ask. Some list them on the menu.

What to ask, and how

Can you make this Jain? — Many Indian vegetarian kitchens know exactly what that means.
Is there onion, garlic or ginger in the base? — The most important question.
Is the masala or sauce made in-house? — Bought-in pastes usually contain onion and garlic.
Is there potato in this? — In fillings and curries.
Are there eggs in the bread or dessert? — Naan and baked goods sometimes contain egg.

Which cuisines make this easier

Easier — Gujarati, Rajasthani and South Indian vegetarian restaurants, many of which offer Jain options. Pure-vegetarian Indian thali restaurants. Some Italian dishes (simple pasta with olive oil, tomatoes and vegetables, without garlic) can be made to order.
Harder — Most non-Indian cuisines, where onion and garlic are foundational. Thai, Chinese, Mexican and Middle Eastern cooking. Most Western fast food and bakery items.

How Savor Scout helps

Savor Scout reads menus and reviews for Jain options, pure vegetarian and Gujarati or Rajasthani kitchens, which is where Jain-friendly cooking is most likely to be found.

What this does not do. A menu cannot show what's in a curry base or a bought-in sauce. Ask whether the dish can be prepared Jain, and confirm the specific ingredients.

Search Jain options near you →

Cuisines worth reading up on

Indian food, Thali, Dosa, Chaat

Situations where this comes up: where to eat when half the group is vegetarian, where to eat with a big group, where to eat when you're meeting the parents.