Edinburgh surprises almost everyone who comes to it expecting Scotland’s culinary identity to be defined entirely by haggis and venison. The city has, over the past decade, built one of the most genuinely exciting plant-based dining scenes in the UK. It’s diverse enough to span 100% vegan Malaysian street food, Roman-family-run Italian restaurants that have stripped out every trace of dairy and meat, upscale vegetarian fine dining a short walk from the Royal Mile, and vegan deli counters turning out pastries, cruffins, and house-made cheeses that Edinburgh residents queue for before the morning rush is done.
VisitScotland has named Edinburgh the best city in the UK for vegans. It is an assessment that feels, once you’ve spent time eating your way around the place, entirely justified. The vegan restaurants in Edinburgh do not feel like concessions made to a dietary minority. They are confident, creative, and often extraordinary, sitting comfortably alongside the city’s finest conventional dining and occasionally surpassing it.
This guide covers the best vegan restaurants in Edinburgh: what makes each one worth visiting, what to expect, and how to find the experience that best suits the moment.
Key Takeaways
- Edinburgh has been named the best city in the UK for vegans, with over a dozen fully vegan restaurants and many more with comprehensive plant-based menus.
- The vegan restaurants in Edinburgh span every register – from elegant vegetarian fine dining near the Royal Mile to Malaysian street food, vegan Italian, Vietnamese pho, and soul food served alongside DJs and a record store.
- Reservations are strongly recommended for the dinner destinations on this list, especially at weekends.
- Most of Edinburgh’s vegan restaurants are independently owned, with a strong emphasis on local, seasonal, and organic ingredients.
- UK spelling and measurements apply throughout Edinburgh’s menus, and the vegan Scotch breakfast, vegan haggis, and vegan Karelian-inspired pastries all make unexpected appearances in a city that takes pride in adapting its own culinary heritage.
Top Vegan Restaurants in Edinburgh
David Bann
David Bann has been a cornerstone of Edinburgh’s vegetarian and vegan dining scene for over twenty years, and its position just off the Royal Mile makes it the natural first stop for visitors seeking something genuinely elegant in the heart of the Old Town. The restaurant is fully vegetarian with extensive vegan options clearly marked, and the menu combines Scottish tradition with confident global influences in a setting of understated, stylish calm.
It is the kind of place that works for everything: a long dinner before a show, a birthday celebration, a quiet meal for two. The 2023 Experts’ Choice Award, which is an accolade awarded to fewer than two per cent of businesses, drawing on over a hundred international publications, is a measure of the consistent quality David Bann delivers. Dishes change with the seasons, the all-Scottish beer selection is entirely vegan, and the wine list includes multiple vegan and organic options. Many of the vegetarian dishes can be made vegan on request.
Reservations recommended, particularly for evenings.
Credit: HappyCow
Henderson’s
Henderson’s is one of the most storied names in Scottish vegetarian dining. The original Hanover Street restaurant opened in the 1960s and became an Edinburgh institution over six decades. It’s one of the first dedicated vegetarian restaurants in the UK. When that chapter closed in 2020, it was Henderson’s grandson, Barrie Henderson, who took up the name with new ideas and a modern sensibility, reopening in 2021 at a new location near Bruntsfield Links.
The result is a restaurant that honours its heritage while feeling entirely contemporary. The kitchen works with locally sourced and organic produce, the menu is inventive and generously proportioned, and the atmosphere is warm without being fussy. The vegan Sunday roast draws particular devotion from regulars, and the Biscoff cheesecake has become something of a legend among Edinburgh’s plant-based community. Henderson’s has been recognised in the Michelin Guide. It’s a distinction that speaks to the seriousness with which it approaches its food.
Credit: Hendersons
Soul Vegan
Soul Vegan is one of Edinburgh’s most distinctive vegan restaurants: a fully plant-based Malaysian kitchen in the Southside neighbourhood, a short walk from the University of Edinburgh, that brings an entirely unexpected corner of Southeast Asian cuisine to the city with complete commitment and considerable skill. The interior is warm and inviting, the welcome genuine, and the menu, built around dishes like laksa, mushroom rendang, green curry tofu, pineapple fried rice, and the restaurant’s signature deep-fried tofu, is one of the most flavour-forward and satisfying in the city.
Malaysian cooking is, in its traditional forms, rich with meat and seafood. Soul Vegan demonstrates how powerfully its aromatics, spice combinations, and textural contrasts translate into plant-based cooking when approached with genuine care rather than compromise. The laksa, in particular, has built a following among Edinburgh’s vegans that extends well beyond the regular customer base. Soul Vegan is 100% organic and 100% vegan throughout.
Credit: Deliveroo
Sen Viet Chay
Near Fountainbridge, Sen Viet Chay is Edinburgh’s fully vegan Vietnamese restaurant, and given how rare that designation is even in major European cities, the quality here is something to celebrate. In 2022, the restaurant transitioned to a completely plant-based menu, and the result is a kitchen that brings authenticity and precision to a cuisine that relies on layered broths, fresh herbs, and the kind of balance between sour, sweet, savoury, and spicy that most restaurants spend years chasing.
The pho is exceptional: a deeply aromatic broth with silken tofu, earthy mushrooms, and fresh herbs that achieves a warmth and complexity entirely its own. The avocado vermicelli summer rolls, the caramelised tofu with mixed vegetables, and the stir-fried water spinach with kohlrabi all draw consistent praise. The interior is decorated with traditional Vietnamese touches – nón lá hats on the walls, a casual atmosphere that somehow makes the quality of the food feel even more generous.
Credit: The Times
Black Rabbit
Black Rabbit is Edinburgh’s original vegan deli and coffee shop, operating from Tollcross with the kind of devoted following that only builds when a place consistently gets the details right. There is no table service as the model is counter and takeaway, but what comes off that counter is exceptional: freshly baked cruffins (a cross between a croissant and a muffin) in both sweet and savoury varieties, breakfast rolls with tofu benedict or smoked “salmon” and cream cheese, sandwiches on house bread, and a deli counter stocked with artisan vegan cheeses and plant-based slices.
The commitment to sustainability runs through everything: 100% green electricity, compostable packaging, and a discount for customers who bring their own cup or container. On a fine Edinburgh day, Black Rabbit with a bench in the Meadows nearby is a combination that is difficult to improve upon. The pistachio croissant, when available, is not to be missed.
Credit: Tripadvisor
FacePlant Foods
FacePlant Foods began as one of Scotland’s first pop-up plant-based kitchens before finding a permanent home on Duke Street in Leith. The kitchen specialises in making vegan meat and cheese alternatives entirely in-house. Imagine mouthwatering bacon, pastrami, haggis, “chicken”, turkey, and a range of artisan vegan cheeses. They use these to build sandwiches and grilled cheese combinations that have become quietly legendary in Edinburgh’s food scene.
The haggis melt is a particularly striking achievement: a distinctly Scottish product reimagined in plant-based form and served in a format that suits the city’s informal eating culture perfectly. The tuna melt, the kimcheeze, and the Hawaiian are all worth close attention. Leith is Edinburgh’s food neighbourhood of the moment, and FacePlant fits its character exactly. It’s independent, creative, and unapologetically its own thing. Open with limited hours from Thursday to Sunday for lunch.
Credit: Deliveroo
Pulse Plant-Based Home Cooking
Pulse is one of Edinburgh’s most atmospheric vegan restaurants by virtue of its location alone: the garden level of St John’s Church, on the corner of Princes Street and Lothian Road, surrounded by the churchyard and with a wooden outdoor deck enclosed by trees. The setting is quiet, slightly unexpected, genuinely beautiful, and unlike anything else in the city. And the food lives up to it.
The kitchen focuses on whole, unprocessed, organic plant-based ingredients with the minimum of added oil and sugar, drawing on cuisines from across the world to create a rotating menu of small and large plates. Avocado toast elevated with attention and craft, Thai-inspired coconut curry, baked aubergine, and tiramisu oats all feature depending on the season. The eco credentials are serious: sustainably sourced ingredients, a minimum-waste policy, and a kitchen that genuinely understands why those things matter rather than treating them as marketing.
Credit: Vegan Food & Living
Kalpna
Kalpna has been Edinburgh’s vegetarian Indian restaurant since 1981, older than many of the city’s best-known institutions, and its longevity is a function of food that has never needed to compromise on quality to stay relevant. The menu is entirely vegetarian with extensive vegan options, and the vegan thali. It’s a curated selection of dishes that offers a complete picture of the kitchen’s range and is one of the most satisfying meals available anywhere in Edinburgh.
Dosas, dum aloo gobi, and the full array of South Indian and North Indian vegetable preparations are all executed with the consistency of a kitchen that has been doing this, every service, for over forty years. The setting is warm and unhurried, the service attentive, and the wine list thoughtfully chosen. For visitors who want to understand how deeply Edinburgh’s vegan and vegetarian scene is embedded in the city’s culinary identity, Kalpna is essential.
Credit: HappyCow
Paradise Palms
Paradise Palms is a venue unlike anything else in Edinburgh’s vegan restaurant scene, and that is the point. Located in the Old Town, it operates simultaneously as a bar, a soul food kitchen, a record store, and on Friday and Saturday nights after 10pm, a DJ venue. The food menu is 100% plant-based throughout: burgers, dirty fries, corn ribs, nachos, and a vegan mac and cheese that has become one of Edinburgh’s most discussed comfort food dishes.
The décor is maximalist and vibrant, the atmosphere is warm and unpretentious, and the kitchen stays open late enough to be genuinely useful after a night out. The combination of great vegan soul food, excellent beers, cocktails, and records available to browse while you eat is an Edinburgh original. Paradise Palms is not quiet or refined, it is exuberant, welcoming, and entirely itself, which is exactly what a city’s vegan dining scene needs.
Credit: Tripadvisor
Novapizza
Novapizza is Edinburgh’s New Town’s fully vegan Italian restaurant, run by the same Roman family behind the beloved Sora Lella. The kitchen brings the authenticity of Italian home cooking to a completely plant-based format with their handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza with bubbly vegan cheese, and house-made sauces. The results are, by any measure, exceptional.
The Quattro Stagioni pizza, the lasagne al ragù, and the cacciatore pizza all draw particular attention. The space is charming and cosy, the staff friendly and attentive, and the combination of high-quality Italian cooking and a fully vegan commitment places Novapizza comfortably among the best vegan restaurants in Edinburgh, regardless of cuisine category. Booking in advance is recommended.
Credit: Edinburgh Reviews
Rabbit Food at The Meadows Tap
Rabbit Food is Edinburgh’s resident vegan junk food kitchen, currently housed in the Meadows Tap pub. The motto, “if it bleeds, we won’t grill it”, sets the tone for a menu that treats plant-based cooking with the same indulgent seriousness that most vegan comfort food menus do not. Burgers, dirty fries, mac and cheese balls, chicken tenders, milkshakes, and a selection of weekly specials that consistently push the format further.
The combination of proper vegan junk food and a genuine Edinburgh pub. It has good beer, an informal atmosphere, and it’s the kind of place where an evening can extend as long as you let it. All of this makes Rabbit Food something that Edinburgh’s vegan restaurant scene specifically needed. It is excellent value, consistently good, and perpetually busy for good reason.
Credit: HappyCow
Antojitos
Antojitos holds a particular distinction: it is the first vegan Mexican restaurant in Scotland, operating from Edinburgh Street Food and bringing tacos, quesadillas, burritos, and loaded nachos to a city that has welcomed the format entirely. The seitan barbacoa quesadilla and the shredded chick’n tacos are among the most recommended dishes at Edinburgh Street Food, and the combination of generous portions, bold flavours, and the market atmosphere of the venue creates an experience that is both satisfying and great value.
For vegan visitors who want something casual, flavour-forward, and distinctly its own, Antojitos is one of Edinburgh’s best street food stops.
Credit: Antojitos
Union of Genius
Union of Genius is Edinburgh’s beloved soup café, operating from the Old Town and offering a daily selection of five or six soups, alongside salads, bread, and a chilli that draws a steady stream of regulars. The format is simple and transparent: good soups made with seasonal ingredients, a warm and welcoming space, and budget-friendly eating in the heart of a city that can sometimes feel expensive.
The “flight of three” option – three small portions of different soups – is the ideal way to approach the menu when the choices feel too good to narrow down to one. Union of Genius is the kind of local institution that every neighbourhood deserves and that Edinburgh’s Old Town is fortunate to have.
Credit: Tripadvisor
Curran Geal
Curran Geal is a fully vegan café on Leven Place, near Tollcross, that went entirely plant-based in June 2023. Small, cosy, and lined with greenery, it serves soups, salads, ciabattas, and wraps alongside a daily rotation of cakes and pastries, and does all of them with the quiet care of a kitchen that understands its ingredients and its neighbourhood.
It is the kind of café that inspires loyalty: a place where the staff are genuinely warm, the food is nourishing and honest, and the atmosphere is exactly what a mid-morning coffee stop or lunchtime break should feel like. The sandwich selection draws particular attention, and the plant-based grocery section offers some genuinely interesting finds.
Credit: HappyCow
Considerit
Considerit is Edinburgh’s dedicated vegan doughnut shop, and the queue outside on weekend mornings tells you what you need to know. The doughnut flavours rotate constantly, but Biscoff, cinnamon sugar, Oreo, and seasonal specials for Halloween, Christmas, and Easter (including vegan crème eggs), create a model that gives regulars reason to return frequently and visitors a sense that there is always something worth trying that they have not had before.
The technical quality is genuinely impressive: these are not concession-stand doughnuts dressed as craft, but well-made, properly glazed and filled products that happen to contain no animal products. Considerit also appears regularly at Edinburgh’s vegan festivals and seasonal markets, making it as much a part of the city’s plant-based cultural scene as its retail one.
Credit: HappyCow
Holy Cow
Holy Cow is a fully vegan café with two Edinburgh locations: Dundee Street at the Edinburgh Printmaker’s building, and Elder Street near St Andrews Bus Station in the city centre. It has built an enthusiastic following for its home-made burgers, open sandwiches, hearty soups, and fresh salads. The Smoked Tofu and Mango Chutney Burger is among the most frequently praised dishes in Edinburgh’s vegan restaurant community, and the kitchen’s commitment to using seasonal ingredients means the menu evolves throughout the year rather than settling into a formula.
The Elder Street location is particularly convenient for visitors exploring the New Town, and the relaxed, independent, and warmly welcoming café atmosphere makes it a natural refuelling stop on a day of Edinburgh sightseeing.
Credit: YouTube
Conclusion
The vegan restaurants in Edinburgh reflect something larger than simply dietary preference. They reflect a city that has decided to take plant-based cooking seriously, from the old-school institutional warmth of Henderson’s and Kalpna to the boundary-pushing creativity of Soul Vegan and FacePlant Foods. Edinburgh’s historic streets, its world-class museums, its extraordinary castle and medieval Old Town – all of these are reasons to visit. The food has quietly become another.
Whatever the occasion demands, whether it’s an elegant dinner in the Old Town, a lazy brunch in Bruntsfield, soul food and records in the evening, or the best cruffin in Scotland on a Tuesday morning, the vegan restaurants in Edinburgh will meet you exactly where you are.
To experience Edinburgh as part of a deeper, more considered journey through the UK, explore our Edinburgh or London tours crafted for travellers who want to go further than the itinerary.
FAQ
Is Edinburgh good for vegans?
Yes, Edinburgh is very vegan-friendly. You’ll find plenty of plant-based cafés, restaurants, and even traditional spots offering vegan options. The city has a growing food scene, making it easy to eat well as a vegan.
What are some popular vegan dishes in Edinburgh?
Popular vegan dishes include plant-based haggis, vegan full Scottish breakfast, lentil soups, and creative street food like vegan burgers and curries. Many places also offer dairy-free desserts and modern plant-based versions of classic Scottish meals.
Is Scotland good for vegans?
Yes, Scotland is increasingly vegan-friendly, especially in cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow. Traditional cuisine is being adapted, and supermarkets and restaurants widely offer plant-based options across the country.
Is there a Michelin-starred vegan restaurant?
Yes, there are Michelin-starred restaurants worldwide offering vegan tasting menus, though fully vegan Michelin-starred spots are still rare. In the UK, some fine-dining restaurants provide high-end plant-based menus even if they are not exclusively vegan.
