Where to Eat Vegan

How hard it is to eat vegan depends almost entirely on which city you are in. Berlin will feed you without you thinking about it. Venice has one fully vegan restaurant, and you need to book it.

That is worth knowing before you go, because it changes how you plan. Below is the method I use in a city I don’t know, then every guide on the site.

Where to eat vegan in Venice: the Grand Canal looking towards Santa Maria della Salute

The short version

Open HappyCow and filter to fully vegan. That gives you a shortlist to work from. HappyCow marks each place as vegan or vegan-friendly, and the difference matters more than it sounds.
Put the shortlist on a Google Map. You will eat at whichever one is closest when you get hungry, so see where they sit before you book a hotel.
Check Instagram before you go. A place that posted this week is open. A place whose last post was eighteen months ago has probably closed, whatever its listing says.
Learn two sentences. How to say you don’t eat meat, fish, eggs, milk or butter, and how to ask whether a dish contains them.

I’ve written more about the apps I actually use and what I wish I’d known before my first vegan trip.

Which cities take work

Berlin and Ubud you can turn up to. Pick a neighbourhood, walk out of your hotel, eat. You will do better with a plan, but you will not go hungry without one.

The Brandenburg Gate at sunset in Berlin, one of the easiest cities in Europe to eat vegan

Kyoto, Oslo, Stockholm and Rome want a bit of looking. In Kyoto that means knowing about shojin ryori, the Buddhist temple cooking that has been almost entirely plant-based here for about 1,200 years. In Oslo it means noticing that the good places sit a few stops apart on the T-bane, Oslo’s metro. An hour of planning and you’re fine.

Temple architecture in Kyoto, home of shojin ryori Buddhist temple cooking

Then there are the cities where nine places is genuinely most of what exists. Venice, Riga, Marrakech, Shanghai and Iceland all have good food and not much of it. Book what you want in advance. Venice especially, where the one fully vegan restaurant fills most nights.

Kirkjufell mountain and the northern lights in Iceland

Go to all of them anyway. The harder cities are often the better trips, and the food you do find tends to be the food you remember.

💡 Tip: Find the supermarket near your hotel on the first afternoon. Bread, hummus, olives and fruit will get you through any evening where the plan falls apart. It takes the pressure off getting every meal right.

Every city guide

A city I haven’t covered yet

Start with the fully vegan places. In a fully vegan kitchen you order anything on the menu and nobody has to check. At the end of a long travel day that matters more than you’d think.

Look at where those places cluster. Almost every city has one or two neighbourhoods doing the work, and staying near them changes the whole trip.

Assume one place will have closed. This happens constantly and it is the most annoying part of eating vegan abroad, because listings stay live long after the shutters come down. Check Instagram before you build an afternoon around somewhere.

Be specific about what you don’t eat. “I don’t eat meat” will get you fish in a lot of places. List it out: no meat, no fish, no eggs, no milk, no butter. It saves everybody time and nobody minds.

Where to eat vegan near me

Type a city and I’ll show you where to eat vegan near you. Every place comes from a guide I researched myself.

Where are you hungry?

Tell me where you are and I will check it against every guide on this site.

Location lookup by OpenStreetMap Nominatim.

If the tool draws a blank, open HappyCow’s map, filter to fully vegan and sort by distance. The place around the corner usually beats the better-reviewed one across town.

Where to eat vegan FAQ

How do I find where to eat vegan near me?

Use the search box above and type your city. It reads my own city guides and returns the closest places I have written about. Each one comes with an address and an Instagram link so you can check it is still trading. If your city isn’t covered yet, start with HappyCow’s map instead. Filter it to fully vegan and sort by distance.

Which city is easiest for vegans?

Berlin. You can walk out of your hotel without a plan and eat well, which is true of very few cities. Ubud comes close.

Which city is hardest?

Venice is one of the harder ones. There is a single fully vegan restaurant, La Tecia Vegana in Dorsoduro, and you need to book it. Go anyway.

Do I need to speak the language?

No. Learn two sentences: that you don’t eat meat, fish, eggs, milk or butter, and how to ask whether a dish contains them. That covers almost everything.

Is HappyCow enough on its own?

It’s the best place to start and a bad place to stop. Listings stay up for months after somewhere closes, so use it to build a shortlist and check Instagram before you commit an evening.

How do I tell whether a restaurant is still open?

Instagram. A recent post means the doors are open. Silence for a year usually means they aren’t, however current the listing looks.

What do I do if everything is shut when I arrive?

Go to a supermarket. Bread, hummus, olives and fruit will see you through the evening anywhere in the world, and it beats walking an unfamiliar city while hungry.

Is it worth going somewhere with almost no vegan options?

Yes. Venice, Marrakech and Iceland are all worth the trip. Book the few good places before you arrive and the rest sorts itself out.

The short version

Which cities take work

Every city guide

UK and Ireland

Nordics and Baltics

Western Europe

Southern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe

Asia

North America

Central and South America

Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean