Whilst Edinburgh’s fine dining and seafood scenes are without doubt thriving, it’s arguably in the city’s plant-based restaurants that the most culinary-based excitement currently lies.
Indeed, Edinburgh has long been recognised as a vegan-friendly location, recently coming out on top of a Student Beans poll on the best UK cities for vegan living and dining, with the Scottish capital boasting a whopping 642 vegan restaurants in 2022.
Having all these venues makes perfect sense for Edinburgh, as it has become a significant hub for veganism, with just under 20% of all its inhabitants stating that they do not eat meat, according to the Daily Record. Edinburgh leans into this as a city, being the first European capital to endorse a plant-based diet to tackle climate change, with the mayor signing the plant-based treaty earlier this year.
With Glasgow also ranking as a vegan-centric UK hotspot, for some this increased focus on plant-based produce risks diners missing out on Scotland’s world famous beef, game and seafood.
Hopefully, this assortment of fantastic vegan restaurants should go a long way in dampening those fears, as it proves that vegan food can be equally impressive and even outclass meat-focused cuisine while still celebrating British produce. With all that in mind, here are the best vegan restaurants in Edinburgh.
Lucky Pig @ Paradise Palms
Paradise Palms is one of Edinburgh’s most inclusive venues, being an LGBTQ+ community space that hosts various events, talks, club nights, and more. Vibrant and fun, the building is full of neon, purple, and pink lighting alongside bright hanging baskets of flowers, creating a neo-futuristic look that matches the quirkiness and forward-thinking mission of the venue.
Home to a record store that focuses on vinyls of disco and dance classics that would have felt at home on the decks of the sadly now-closed Fire Island, as well as local artists signed by Paradise Palms’ very own record label, there’s a creative energy to this place that we just love.
You’ll be pleased to hear that this energy extends to the food. In Paradise Palms, you’ll find Lucky Pig, the resident kitchen that serves a range of vegan dishes that feel nourishing, both for body and soul. Lucky Pig has grown in reputation and size since its residence at Paradise Palms, with its menu swelling to offer a menu that doesn’t compromise on choice or flavour, giving life’s rich tapestry of dietary tastes the chance to eat well.
All the food from Lucky Pig is 100% plant-based, but despite that can offer some traditionally ‘dairy’ focused heavy meals, like mac and cheese and dirty fries, instead using soy milk to make their cheese. That said, the main focus here is vegan burgers, with patties made from seitan, a popular plant-based meat substitute that uses a base of wheat gluten and aims to mimic the mouthfeel and flavour of chicken and pork.
Lucky Pig’s South by Southwest burger is their trademark dish. Here, surprisingly juicy seitan patties are topped with vegan BBQ brisket, smoked dairy-free cheese, housemade, egg free dijonnaise, and a super inventive and distinctive BBQ sauce that leans into the restaurant’s Scottish heritage by using Buckfast as its base, bringing a sour plum and cherry tang to proceedings.
Yep, the Lucky Pig really is the antithesis of the assumption that vegans ought to be satisfied with a stuffed pepper and a side salad. In their place, you’ll find ambitious plates full of verve and flavour. We love it.
Address: 41 Lothian St, Edinburgh, EH1 1HB
Website: theparadisepalms.com
Harmonium
Harmonium is found on the outskirts of Leith, a district proud of its maritime heritage. Being a vegan restaurant, Harmonium’s location might feel a little incongruous to the uninitiated; however, it tastefully harkens back to Leith’s seafood history in more subtle ways, deploying typical seaside flavours like lemon and seaweed, all without using any meat or fish in its dishes.
Blending in with the typical architecture of the area, Harmonium uses oak wood and old-fashioned exposed ceiling beams alongside off-white chalk walls to evoke its history and position on this most famous of Edinburgh neighbourhoods.
The venue is a sister site of Glasgow-based Stereo & Co, and is famous for its collection of animal-free pizzas and burgers. To get a real sense of the tastes on show here, their Smokestack Blues Burger is a super inventive option that pushes the boundaries of ‘vegan’ to their most tasty of conclusions. Here they use a soy patty that’s perfectly suited to soaking up spices, which is then topped with a pungent, totally vegan blue cheese sauce that marries beautifully with a roast grape chutney, building a complex, sweet and slightly fermented flavour profile.
It’s not only burgers that Harmonium excels at, though. If you’re looking for quality vegan pizza, try the Adriatic, which offers a faithful assortment of Mediterranean tastes. Topped with salty olive tapenade, vegan feta, and sweet and sharp cherry tomatoes, this one is a fine balancing act of flavours, and itches every scratch diners might be having for something full-flavoured and satisfying.
Don’t stop there; the restaurant’s char grilled Scotch bonnet cauliflower steak makes smart use of the versatility of the lead ingredient, frying tranches in a cumin-infused oil to create an aromatic, fiery-af dish whose accompanying fluffy rice, chickpeas, and roasted peppers complement things perfectly.
Harmonium is well celebrated among the vegan community and has the accolades to prove it, winning the Best Vegan Restaurant at the Edinburgh Evening News awards in 2018 amongst other high profile honours.
The restaurant also boasts a lively little cocktail list that mixes the classics with a few inventive signatures. For a fruity, frivolous option that feels like summer in a glass, try their Passionfruit Paloma, made with Tequila and a blend of passionfruit, lime, and blood orange soda; great for sipping alongside a starter or ending the evening with, equally.
Read: 5 of the our favourite craft beer pubs and bars in Glasgow
Address: 7-11 East London Street, Edinburgh, EH7 4BN
Website: harmoniumbar.co.uk
Seeds For The Soul
Though so many modern vegan restaurants tend to take inspiration from the proliferation of the not-always-all-that-appetising-sounding ‘dirty’ food, Seeds For The Soul is all about the nourishing, health-conscious side of things, with bowls filled to the brim with the vibrancy of vegetables and fruits in season.
Opened in 2017, the venue is compact yet cosy, making the most of pastel flower bouquets and hanging plants to add a gentle boho appeal to the location. Like other vegan restaurants focused on sustainable living, the furniture is crafted from up-cycled wood, giving it a quirky and creative feel that’s enhanced further by the fairy lights hanging over the ceiling. It’s a calm and relaxed place to eat, with seats filled with plump, giving pillows, encouraging you to kick back as you tuck in.
The menu focuses primarily on ‘bowls’ – not the crockery, but rather, an assortment of already-seasoned, texturally complementing, self-saucing treats, all contained within their receptacle. Simply mix and enjoy.
Perhaps our favourite order here is Seeds’ satay peanut bowl, which sees pan-fried tofu tossed in an oily peanut and curry sauce, all served over thick-cut courgette noodles and a tangle of pickled vegetables.
Other lunch-friendly options here include the chick’n pan plano wrap, which uses a chicken substitute from THIS™ to help build a convincing fajita wrap, given body via a keenly seasoned medley of black beans, peppers, and sweetcorn before being mixed with a gently spicy jalapeno sauce. It’s all housed in a floury, toasted flatbread. It’s good stuff indeed.
If you are looking for more of a treat meal, you can also get your chops around one of their excellent burgers, which use well-renowned Beyond Meat patties that brilliantly mimic your usual minced beef. Go with their Beyond BBQ, which sees those Beyond patties sharing the sheets (or rather, poppyseed buns) with seitan bacon, battered onion rings, and a well-crafted BBQ and garlic sauce blend.
The chief appeal of Seeds for the Soul, though, is the laid back nature of the place; it’s a low-key venue that offers tasty, accessible vegan food, and oftentimes, that’s all you want, right?
Address: 167 Bruntsfield Pl, Edinburgh EH10 4DG
Website: seedsforthesoul.co.uk
Nova Pizza Vegan Kitchen
You never forget your first. For Edinburgh, Nova Pizza emerged as the city’s first-ever vegan Italian restaurant. Since then, it has welcomed many at-first curious and then devoted customers through the years, maintaining its popularity despite the immense growth of vegan-centric cuisine in Edinburgh.
The restaurant is owned by a family from Rome who are dedicated to creating authentic Italian meals suitable for vegans, ensuring that there’s no sense of sacrifice in the generosity and hospitality of the food here.
If you’re not looking carefully, you may miss the restaurant entirely as you stroll through Edinburgh New Town. The venue is small and unassuming on the outside but is filled with charm once you get in, with walls painted with images of columns and arches, making the narrow interior feel like a tight alleyway of the old town of Rome. Evergreen plants and drapes hang from the ceiling, adding a touch of intimacy and romance to proceedings.
Some of their best dishes are made from locally sourced ingredients, including the Caprese salad starter, which deploys a delightful vegan ricotta made with cashews, served alongside plum cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, and a homemade pesto that creates a well-balanced, crisp, and lightly-acidic dish.
After this, indulge in Nova’s take on a classic spaghetti carbonara, a statement dish that uses simple ingredients like dairy-free cream to replicate that familiar, beloved emulsion of egg yolk and pasta water. Smoked seitan here is used as a stand-in for guanciale, the pasta hand-made from wheat flour, demonstrating how beautiful simplicity can be. Nova Pizza prides itself on not over-complicating their vegan dishes, and the carbonara is a fine example of this ethos.
Of course, the family-owned restaurant is a pizza place first and foremost, with their Amatriciana having earned something approaching cult status in the city.
This faux-cheesy pizza is topped with fried seitan, red onions, vegan mozzarella, and parmesan. With so many pizzerias omitting cheese from their vegan pizzas entirely, this dish celebrates the idea that compromises don’t need to occur to serve great vegan food. The results are marvellous, with that stretch and pull from the mozzarella all present and correct.
Being Mediterranean, Nova also offers a great wine list, filled with vegan options to go with their all-vegan menu. If you’re having the aforementioned carbonara, pair it with the Baccolo Bianco, a silky white with a round floral palate fragrance redolent of pear and candied lemon. Speaking of that latter ingredient, Nova’s limoncello di Capri is the ideal way to round off a meal here. Go on, you know you want to…
Read: 5 things to eat in Rome, the Eternal City
Address: 42 Howe St, Edinburgh, EH3 6TH
Website: novapizza.co.uk
Kalpna
Kalpna is a longstanding Edinburgh institution, serving vegan Indian dishes to hungry locals for more than 40 years, making it a well-established venue that has become part of the history of this great city.
Being vegan-friendly isn’t the main aim of Kalpna. Instead, it’s a welcome side-effect of their hard work to cook from the traditional canon of the Punjab and Gujarati regions of the country, whose dishes are often vegetarian. As a result of this, it’s grown to become a favourite for the Indian population within Edinburgh and acts as a de facto community hub and meeting point.
The current managing director of Kalpna is Sheela Bhosale – interviewed here about the opening of her other restaurant Konkana – who works hard to ensure that these aromatic Indian dishes are accessible to all diets while also pledging that they use fresh, locally sourced ingredients.
Although the venue’s appearance has changed significantly over the years, the menu sticks to its roots by serving dishes it offered when it first opened, blending these all-time favourites with modern and contemporary takes on regional Indian street food. Stand-out bites include Pakora, vegetables that have been deep-fried in a spice-rich batter and served in a tamarind-date sauce. There’s also Dahi Puri on the menu; fried Indian bread served with potatoes, chickpeas and onions and a light yoghurt and green coriander chutney.
The dishes are colourful and vibrant, which matches the stunning mosaic centrepiece that adorns their walls, and eating at Kalpna is like engaging in the modern history of Edinburgh and its communities.
It’s navigated the decades perfectly, adapting to modern times while staying true to what won over its original clientele all those years ago. No matter when you eat at Kalpna, it will take you back to the first time you tried their superb vegan cooking. Now, is someone cutting onions in the kitchen?
Address: 2-3 St Patrick Sq Edinburgh – EH8 9EZ
Website: kalpnarestaurant.com