SAINT JOHN \u2013 Keith and Sarah Broome have believed the city would support a vegetarian restaurant since they organized a three-day pop-up restaurant at the Saint John Ale House nearly two years ago.<\/h4>\n

\u201cIt sold out every night,\u201d says Keith, the\u00a0executive sous chef at the\u00a0Ale House<\/a>. \u201cThe entire restaurant was flooded with vegetarian [food].\u201d<\/p>\n

The pop-up restaurant, which featured dishes like a vegetarian chicken-ball dish, a vegan mac and cheese, and a vegetarian donair, served as a way of testing the market for a full-scale restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was us showing people that it would work, and it was way more successful than we had expected,\u201d says Sarah. \u201cAt that point, we were like, \u2018this could definitely work in the city.\u2019 Up to that point, everyone was like, \u2018no, you\u2019d be wasting your time and money. It\u2019s never going to work in this city. They\u2019re not ready for it.\u2019 To me, it didn\u2019t make sense because every other city has a vegetarian restaurant. Why don\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly two years later, Saint John still doesn\u2019t have one, but Sarah and Keith are taking steps toward creating one. In early October, they started\u00a0circulating a survey on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0gauge\u00a0interest and get feedback on their idea; they received more than 700 completed surveys in just a few days.<\/p>\n