Vegetarian · no tourist traps · no paid placements

The 5 best vegetarian restaurants in London

// 5 of 12 vetted London spots · updated September 2026

A grilled-vegetable plate bolted onto a steakhouse menu is not a vegetarian restaurant. These are the London kitchens where the meat-free cooking is the reason to go — Taiwanese, British Wine Bar and Indo-Chinese among them: 5 spots pulled from the 12 we have vetted in the city. Chosen the way locals choose, never through a marketing budget.

1. 1★4.7

   Taiwanese

   Bao Borough

   Bao Borough brings Taiwanese cooking to Stoney Street, in the middle of Borough Market — gua bao, small plates, and a queue that rarely fully clears. The bao are the draw: soft steamed buns filled with braised pork or fried chicken, ordered two or three at a time alongside Taiwanese small plates and house soft serve. Plates run around £18 and there are vegetarian options throughout. The Borough site puts the restaurant among the traders it buys from, which suits a menu built on a handful of things done exactly the same way every service.

   Dietary: Vegetarian options are on the menu.

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2. 2★4.7

   British Wine Bar

   Brawn

   Brawn is a wine bar and restaurant on Columbia Road in east London, where the menu is rewritten daily around whatever the kitchen bought that morning. The format is small plates, charcuterie and a natural wine list that took the category seriously long before it was fashionable. Nothing is fixed: dishes appear and vanish with the market, vegetarian plates included, and mains settle around £24. The Columbia Road address means flower-market crowds at the weekend and a largely local room the rest of the week. This is the sort of relaxed, unshowy neighbourhood restaurant east London builds its reputation on.

   Dietary: Vegetarian options are on the menu.

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3. 3★4.6

   Indo-Chinese

   Fatt Pundit

   Fatt Pundit cooks Indo-Chinese food on Berwick Street — the Hakka Chinese cooking of Kolkata, a cuisine with almost no representation in London. The style came out of Kolkata's Chinatown, where Hakka families applied Chinese technique to Indian spice, and the menu follows it faithfully: chicken Manchurian, chilli paneer, Hakka noodles, momos. Vegetarian dishes are central rather than accommodating, and plates run around £18. The Soho room is small and books out, which is what happens when one restaurant becomes the reference point for an entire category in a city. Reserve ahead.

   Dietary: Vegetarian options are on the menu.

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4. 4

   Japanese Home Cooking

   Toconoco

   A canal-side Japanese café on Hertford Road in De Beauvoir Town, Toconoco cooks the kind of food Japanese households actually eat. The daily set lunch arrives as a full tray — a main dish with rice, miso soup and a small salad — and the rest of the counter reads like a Tokyo lunch stop: onigiri filled with ume, kombu, tuna mayo or salmon, hot or cold soba and udon, teriyaki chicken or pork don among the daily specials. Prices stay in single figures, which is why the room fills with locals rather than visitors. A separate kids' play room sits off the main space, and there are Japanese teas and desserts for anyone stopping in between meals.

   Reservations: Book online — the restaurant takes reservations through its website.

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5. 5

   Caribbean West African

   139 Fika

   139 Fika is a contemporary Caribbean and West African restaurant on Bellenden Road, in the quiet Peckham backstreet that locals treat as their high street. Brunch leans on ackee, plantain and hard dough bread — scrambled ackee with crushed avocado and tomato salsa, smoked salmon with wakame and a saffron red red sauce — while the evening menu turns to bere bere roasted chicken, jollof-dressed cauliflower steak and suya-spiced aged sirloin. There is a pre-theatre menu for anyone eating early, coffee from Square Mile and pastries from Galeta during the day, and a few outdoor seats. Evening mains sit at the higher end, from around eighteen to thirty-five pounds.

   Terrace: There is outdoor seating for warmer days.

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