Where To Eat Truly Great Vegetarian Food In London
In the past, round-ups of the best vegetarian restaurants always seemed to end with exactly the same line, didn’t they? “You won’t even miss the meat!” they’d declare, along with an obligatory reference to the absence of stuffed mushrooms and/or peppers on the menu. Happily, the focus has shifted now, not just in reviews but in the food world as a whole. Many of the London restaurants listed below are fully vegan or vegetarian by design, but the rest just so happen to be places where you can have an incredible meal without eating meat – something we should all be doing more of.
Naïfs
Quite possibly the best vegan restaurant you’ve never heard of. Tucked behind Peckham’s Queens Road, Naïfs is an oasis of Ercol and herringbone parquet, with an open kitchen serving a menu that’s simultaneously cosy and cool. Vegan cooking is second-nature to chef Tom Heale – he used to be at Vanilla Black, one of London’s first properly high-end vegetarian restaurants. Things are more down to earth here, but there’s an undeniable cleverness to dishes like smoked lentil pâté with fig jam, and grilled squash with berbere butter, lingonberries and flamingo peas. Naïfs is only open from Thursday to Saturday, and it’s always busy, but it’s well worth persevering with trying to book.
SE15
Bubula
If I’m trying to convince anyone of vegetarian food’s deliciousness, my first port of call in London is Bubula. The name means “sweetheart” in Yiddish, with Middle-Eastern flavours front and centre at both of its sites: the first, in Spitalfields, exclusively serves a Bubula Knows Best menu, while the second, in Soho, offers dishes à la carte as well, giving it a slight edge, in my books – especially as I tend to get at least three of the oyster mushroom skewers with tamari and coriander seeds. Order the holy trinity of dips that is their hummus (spiked with harissa, jalapeno oil, and apricots); labneh (served with confit garlic and a sprinkling of zaatar); and baba ganoush (drizzled with curry leaf oil and anointed with a scattering of pine nuts), then work your way through the small plate offering. The confit potato latkes are irresistibly good. HM
Multiple locations
Gauthier Soho
In 2021, multi-award-winning French chef Alexis Gauthier made an announcement that raised eyebrows: his townhouse restaurant Gauthier Soho would become fully vegan, as he himself had been since 2016. Anyone who thought it was a stunt has been proved well and truly wrong. The Grand Dîner tasting menu here is, in a word, stunning – 10 courses of truly creative cooking, served by a charming team who wear their knowledge lightly. The menu changes seasonally; on the current one, the biggest revelations are a pillow-light Brioche Feuilletée with moreish dal and quince chutney, and a celeriac dauphinois whose starchy goodness is contrasted with sweet and sour grapes.
W1D
Tofu Vegan
Yes, there’s plenty of tofu here, and yes, it’s a dream come true for vegans – but Tofu Vegan goes far beyond the bounds of its name. Its flagship on Islington’s Upper Street is perennially packed, with newer sites in Golders Green and Spitalfields proving equally popular. Run by the same team as Xi’an Impression in Highbury, it offers an entirely vegan take on regional Chinese cooking. The plump wontons, stuffed with shredded tofu and vegetables in a chilli-spiked house sauce, justify a visit alone, but the rest of the dim sum more than holds its own, as do larger dishes like the sizzling fried tofu in “fish-fragrant” sauce. Mock-meat sceptics’ heads will be turned by the Chongqing “chicken” amid a mountain of crispy chilli pieces and spring onion.
Multiple locations
Fallow
The St James’s Market development on Haymarket might be – whisper it – a bit beige, but the food at this environmentally conscious, low-waste restaurant is anything but. Fallow started life as a pop-up around the corner on Heddon Street, and the playful, roll-your-sleeves-up feel has persisted in creations like the corn “ribs” with kombu seasoning and whole-leek and cheese croquetas with confit onion. Nearly half of the menu is vegetarian, and it’s arguably the better half; the mushroom parfait, made with fungi grown above the prep kitchen, is jaw-droppingly good, somehow richer and more velvety than any traditional pâté.
SW1Y
Oren
It might be the drizzly depths of the British winter outside on Hackney’s Shacklewell Lane, but inside Oren the climate is forever Mediterranean. The menu – sharing plates straight from the grill – is inspired by chef Oded Oren’s time in Tel Aviv, and makes inventive, sunny use of seasonal British veg (think Hispi cabbage grilled over charcoal with romesco and winter tomato salad with Kalamata olives). And the bread! It’s like floating away on a dough cloud (and ideal for mopping up the restaurant’s moreish baked Borlotti beans); order three times as much as you think you’ll want.
E8
Jikoni
Ravinder Bhogal’s much-loved Marylebone restaurant, with its menu influenced by her childhood in Kenya and her family’s Punjabi roots, styles itself as a “no borders kitchen” – and that goes for dietary requirements, too. Thus the vegan and vegetarian likes of soy keema buns with lime pickle and wild mushrooms on toast with curry Hollandaise sit alongside the legendary prawn toast Scotch egg, and the moilee can be ordered with either butternut squash or roasted hake. The vegan pear and saffron cake with pistachios, meanwhile, is a truly indulgent delight. Service is wonderfully warm and the room is beautiful, too. If you’re after a special date venue, look no further.
W1U
Acme Fire Cult
The 2010s beards-and-barbeque cooking boom wasn’t kind to the meat-avoidant: who can forget those high-rise burgers with a knife through them? Reading Acme Fire Cult’s description of itself as a “live fire concept” and looking at its moody, industrial photos, it would be easy to dismiss it as yet another meaty bro-fest. But that would be to do it a terrible disservice, because this is quite simply one of the best places in London for vegetarians and anyone who just wants to get stuck into a lot of really sexy cooking. Acme Fire Cult puts veg centre stage: think coal-roasted celeriac with a mushroom-and-kelp XO sauce and gorgeously charred aubergine steaks with sourdough mole. A collaboration with 40FT Brewery yields gems like a hot sauce made with beer-soused Ancho chillies and a house “Marmite” to be slathered on sourdough courtesy of The Dusty Knuckle, too.
E8
Casa Fofò
A neighbourhood restaurant in Hackney with bare-brick walls, seasonal ingredients sourced by local producers, shelves stacked with ferments… the copy writes itself. Except it doesn’t, because nothing at Casa Fofò is quite what it seems. From fro-yo swirled with lip-smacking umeboshi plums to a fermented tom yum with potato, chef Adolfo de Cecco always thinks outside the box. Even the excellent sourdough is elevated by caramelised butter and roasted yeast. The vegan version of the tasting menu is brilliant, and because meat and fish are just accent-touches anyway, this place is an especially good choice for a group; you can all eat differently without it killing the sense of occasion. At £68 for an eight-course tasting menu, with £49 for the same number of very generous paired pours, a meal here is sensational value for this (or any) part of town. The Michelin star feels almost incidental.
E8
The Water House Project
I feel about communal dining the way that most people seem to feel about sharing plates, but it’s impossible not to be charmed by The Water House Project, which started out in chef Gabriel Waterhouse’s Bethnal Green apartment before moving into its permanent home in Corbridge Crescent. If you’re fully vegetarian and looking for a special occasion restaurant, make a reservation here and work your way through the long tasting menu. (There’s a “shorter” one if nine dishes plus snacks simply feels like too much, but I, for one, wouldn’t want to miss out on the likes of Cylindra beetroot topped with wild garlic and rose petals.) There’s a Scandinavian bent to the ingredients, with the menu changing seasonally. One of the highlights for Autumn 2023? The cheese course, complete with rolled oats, Cashel blue and Riesling sorbet. HM
E2
Club Mexicana
One of London’s vegan street-food pioneers – it’s been going since 2014 – hot-pink Club Mexicana just keeps getting better. Along with homes in Brixton, Kingly Court and Seven Dials Market, there’s a much bigger and bookable Club Mexicana in Spitalfields, which is an absolutely fool-proof choice before or after a night out. The tacos (glazed jackfruit “ribs”, seitan shawarma “al pastor”) are outrageously good, the margaritas are spot on, and it’s basically impossible not to have a good time here with the fun and friendly team, whether you’re vegan or otherwise. Oh, and they’ve nailed the holy grail of vegan “cheese”, too. Get the nachos, you won’t regret it.
Multiple locations
