THE BEST VEGAN RESTAURANTS IN LONDON

The first rule of Vegan club, according to comedian Tez Ilyas, is tell everyone about vegan club. The second rule is, tell everyone about vegan club. And the third is, don't eat meat. Here are London's best restaurants for vegans, from Notting Hill to Hackney

words by RICK JORDAN

​NOT SO MANY YEARS AGO, being vegan was about as fashionable as wearing socks with sandals. Now, of course, both are right on-trend. But hopefully meat-free eating will endure. And numbers are rising: more than half a million people in the UK are now vegan, a rise of 360 per cent in 10 years. Many people go vegan for a few days a week. Chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi and Bruno Loubethave brought zingy fresh ingredients, spices and recipes to the table and expanded our palates, while young food-bloggers such as Ella Woodward and the Hemsley sisters have championed meaty but meat-free alternatives such as tempeh and seitan. This August, Kerb held its first wholly vegan streetfood festival, Livin' on the Veg, in King's Cross, with pimped-up fries, jackfruit buffalo wings and mud-pie brownies on the menu. There's even a glossy vegan cookbook from Phaidon to leave lying on your coffee table.

When it comes to eating out, we salute pioneers such as Mildred's in Soho - open almost 30 years, which scooped vegetarian food away from the clumpy brown plate-breaking efforts of the 1960s - and neighbourhood joints such as Finsbury Park's Jai Krishna, which has served southern Indian dishes to generations of herbivores. But a new species of vegan and vegetarian café has arrived, less earnest, shinier, and with far more cupcakes.

​KIN CAFÉ, FITZROVIA

​If you haven't mooched around Fitzrovia in the shadow of the Post Office Tower recently, you're missing out on one of London's fastest-growing foodie quarters. Clipstone restaurant is around the corner, and on Foley Street there's Bonnie Gull, Foley's and, sandwiched in between, Kin Café. It's owned by the personable Charlie Meadows, inspired and encouraged by his vegan father, a steely-eyed silver fox who'd make a good poster boy for the meat-free diet. His father helped set up Kin Café so he'd have a place to go for lunch, but luckily others are allowed in too. It's a neat, Scandi-fresh space in grey and white, with tables outside in warm weather. This is open from breakfast through to afternoon tea, with highlights on the vegan early-bird menu including scrambled tofu on toast, and cauliflower rosti, while for lunch there's a mix of imaginative superfood salads, laced with mild dressings, a quiche (tofu, sweet potato, mushroom and basil pesto) and a champion burger. The vegan burger is a good test for any place, and the quinoa one here isn't too heavy but has 'bite', and not a parpy hint of the dreaded Eighties festival beanburger. Behind the scenes is a real sustainable approach, with recycled furniture and biodegradable coffee cups. Kin takes its drinks seriously, sourcing coffee from Clifton Coffee Roasters and tea from Postcard Teas: the clued-in team may point you to a toasty supernatural green brew, perhaps, after you fire down a cold-pressed turmeric shot, or order a dirty chai latte (with a shot of espresso) to take out.

Address: Kin Café, 22 Foley Street, London W1
Website: kincafe.co.uk

​NOSH GARDEN KITCHEN, HYDE PARK

​La Suite West is a boutique hotel that opened in 2012 in a white-faced townhouse just off Hyde Park, not far from Bayswater tube, its moody, monochrome interior designed by Anouska Hempel. The outside dining space is more tangly and bucolic and secret gardeny, with vines trained overhead, fairylights when the afternoon draws in, and candles lit in glass vases. It was a bold move to make its entire restaurant menu vegan. Not only that but it's a dry hotel, so you can bang your hands on the table and demand the finest wines known to humanity, yet only receive a sparkling grape juice for your pains. The main menu (devised by Geeta Sidhu-Robb, who intriguingly has food technician on her CV) is as streamlined as the interiors, with lots of raw ingredients, such as beetroot carpaccio and thin curls of courgette, as well as a mixed-quinoa salad bulked out with artichokes and white beans. It's an if-you're-nearby safe haven rather than a destination restaurant, but of interest is the afternoon tea, which has fun reinventing the classics: a scrambled tofu and mustard cress finger sandwich, tangy BBQ tempeh - a favourite - and cranberry scones with coconut cream and strawberries. The tea, served in a see-through pot, is endless, so banish thoughts of Champagne and try as many as you can - the popcorny genmaicha for a change, or biscuity coquelicot. On the way here, you may want to pay your respects to the poster boy for anti-ageing, Peter Pan, whose statue stands on the north side of Hyde Park.

Address: Nosh Garden Kitchen, La Suite West, 41-51 Inverness Terrace, Bayswater, London W2
Website: lasuitewest.com

​FARMACY, NOTTING HILL

​Not ever to be confused with Damian Hirst's pill-rattling Pharmacy restaurant of the 1990s. Although if you spent that decade in a blur of hard-partying lost weekends, this is just the sort of place you should be booking yourself into now, to talk about your yoga-retreat break on Formentera while administering a Fire Starter syringe shot (ginger, turmeric, cayenne and lemon) to your mouth. Owned by Camilla Fayed, inspired by her visits to vegan joints in LA and New York, this is an easy-on-the-eye place that virtually smells of chlorophyll, with naked wood and bamboo and hanging plants put together in a way that doesn't instantly conjure a student flat circa 1974. (Perhaps it's the subliminal influence of advisory chef Joao Ricardo Alves, who is now based in Bali.) The staff are super friendly. And while there are eggs, making this a veggan restaurant, it's easy to steer a dairy-free path through the clearly labelled menus, from tigernut milk and sprouted buckwheat granola for breakfast to a fragrant green curry at dinner, with hits of flavour from goji ketchup, coriander 'yoghurt' and za'atar crackers. Highlights were an artichoke pizzetta - a crisp slice of sourdough with cashew cheese - and the signature burger (millet, black bean and mushroom, piled high with garlic aioli and pickles). The colourful, crunchy swirls in the Earth Bowls - quinoa, perhaps, with avocado, seaweed, sauerkraut, greens - work better at lunch. There's a decent wine list, and rather good cocktails - an Expresso Martini with vanilla vodka, or a fresh Mezcal Magic (with pineapple, lime, apple and basil). It's also one of the few places in London to serve a thoroughly vegan afternoon tea, with a hemp-leaf brew and twists on lemon-meringue pie and scones with coconut clotted cream.

Address: Farmacy, 74 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5SH
Website: farmacylondon.com

​KASPAR'S AT THE SAVOY, COVENT GARDEN

Unless you pick at the bread or order 'just the samphire, please', seafood restaurants tend to be off-limits to vegans. But at Kaspar's, head chef James Pare has recently added a vegan menu to the seasonal seafood one, so while your pescatarian companion cracks on crustaceans, you can graze on the confit heirloom tomato salad, vegan sushi with avocado or the delicately spiced crunch of a samosa with a black-lentil ragout. Mains also display a deft hand with Asian flavours, with laksa (tempura tofu, book choy, coconut chilli) among the well-mannered highlights, along with a well-seasoned burger (lentil, chickpea, cauliflower). The chocolate tart, accessorised with salted caramel and a honeycomb sorbet, is a rich wedge of awesomeness. But in some ways the menu isn't the point. The point is that vegans can now hold their heads up high in this beautiful Art Deco room, whether there's an 'r' in the month or not. And it's a chance to experience the Savoy's superb wine list, much of which is vegan-friendly - ask the excellent sommelier to pair each course with a glass, and expect something crisp and bright from the Alsace along the way.

Address: Kaspar's at The Savoy, Strand, London WC2R 0EU
Website: kaspars.co.uk

​DELICIOUSLY ELLA, MAYFAIR

Self-taught chef Ella Woodward has long been in the advance guard of the clean-eating movement, and her protein balls have bounced throughout the land, along with recipes for sweet potato brownies and sweet-potato stew (sweet potatoes are a favourite). Her cookbook was the fastest-selling one ever; she has over a million Instagram followers and now a trio of Deliciously Ella cafés, all meat, dairy and gluten-free. No surprise these aren't speakeasy hipster dens blaring out underground hip hop but bright homely spaces with blue tiles, cushions and lampshades, just the sort of friendly neighbourhood caff to stop by for a bowl of oat-milk porridge in the morning, or a falafel and butternut-squash-hummus salad bowl at lunch. The café-deli on Seymour Place is the original and like the others has a relatively short, tried-and-tested menu that covers vegetable paella, bok choy-and-spinach soup and strawberry sponge. The highlight? A delicately textured aubergine and sweet-potato cakes, laced with coconut labneh, dukkah and peanut dressing, with courgette and celeriac noodles. Drinks include a delicious cold-pressed root juice, cinnamon milkshake and peanut-butter smoothie.

Address: 21 Seymour Place, Mayfair, London W1H 5BH
Website: deliciouslyella.com

​TEMPLE OF HACKNEY

​Vegan fast food. The flipside to all that clean-eating vitality, and much needed, just to show that vegan food can be as bad-ass and unhealthy and greasy as meat-based takeaways. Up until now the options were generally hummus in pitta bread, falafel, or chips with chips. But vegan fast food is really speeding up right now, and Temple of Hackney riffs on the idea of fried chicken, using seitan, or wheat meat. You can make seitan easily enough, or buy it in jars from natural-food shops, and it looks like an exhibit in a medical museum. But it's a very adaptable source of protein, a dough made using wheat gluten, and can be shaped and flavoured to resemble everything from steaks and ribs to bacon and chicken wings. The idea of former KFC alumni Rebecca McGuinness, the Temple of Hackney began life as a Brick Lane food stall and graduated to this off-Mare Street joint. It's a classic takeaway, with food listed behind the counter, cans of Karma cola at the front, and chips with everything. Fillet burger and wings are popular, both in satisfyingly crispy batter, with BBQ sauce for dipping. But the stand-out dish is actually the mac 'n' cheese, creamy and messy and every bit as tasty as the dairy version, with lardons of crispy seitan instead of bacon. It's best eaten out of a paper bag on - budge up - a table outside, while enjoying the sights, flashing lights and sounds of alfresco downtown Hackney. The Blade Runner 2049 future may be one with seitan doner legs slowly rotating in over-lit kebab shops.

Address: 10 Morning Lane, London E9
Website: facebook.com/templeofseitan

​CLUB MEXICANA, DALSTON

With its smooth flurries of avocado and chilli-fired beans, Mexican street food is a natural fit for vegans - on a par with the snap, crackle and veggie pop of South India. 'It's just so good for showcasing vegan food,' says Meriel Armitage, who gave up a career in advertising to launch her Latin American supper club. 'You have all that pickle-y crunch, the herbs and spices.' Meriel was partly inspired by the hangouts she'd been to in San Francisco and Melbourne - 'the food scene there is amazing. Over here, vegan restaurants just wasn't hip at all until about three years ago.' Her Club Mexicana supperclub became a cool-as-kombucha stall at Camden Market, then earlier this year took over the kitchen at Pamela, the easygoing Dalston bar with a Baywatch fixation (trainspotter's note: Pamela Anderson opened her own short-lived vegan restaurant in the South of France earlier this year). Plates are as colourful as a Frida Kahlo painting. There are two things everyone should order: the tofish taco, made by marinating strips of tofu in seaweed for a briny-tangy bite, and the fried, cannoli-like cheesy tubes, made using coconut oil and nutritional yeast, which pull apart with a satisfyingly stringy gloop. The burrito is the size of small knapsack, and stuffed with vegan Caesar salad, peppered with strips of seitan bacon; the chicken wings crispy and with the bite of a Thai fish cake. There's a whole argument here about why vegan dishes feel the need to resemble non-vegan food - such as chicken wings and cheese - but Club Mexicana isn't about preaching to the converted, more about enticing those people who may normally be shovelling down a lamb kebab or fried chicken. You can also find Club Mexicana at Hawker House on Canada Water on Friday and Saturday, KERB Camden all week round and Dinerama on Weds-Sunday.

Address: Pamela, 428 Kingsland Road, London E8 4AA
Website: clubmexicana.com

Source: ​http://www.cntraveller.com/recommended/food/vegan-restaurants-london