Best Vegetarian Restaurants in New York City

The menu in this cheerful, minimalist space is detailed and clever, offering vibrant dishes for breakfast, lunch and brunch. Think green chickpea hummus served with emmer wheat pita, refreshing crudités, and a gem lettuce salad tossed with kosho-marinated cucumber and creamy sesame-peppercorn dressing. 

This tight but artsy little jewel box of a restaurant aims to give vegan food some well-deserved polish. This is excellent food that just happens to be vegan.Try the cold, salt-baked sweet potato with puréed watercress, crispy jicama and Meyer lemon; or deep-fried sushi rice topped with avocado, smashed ginger, sesame seeds, and streaks of miso paste. 

The ssam bap here is a fun experience with a long platter of fillings. Dark leafy lettuce and thin, herbaceous sesame leaves are topped with creamy slices of avocado, crunchy bean sprouts, pickled daikon, carrot, cucumber, radish and three rice options—white, brown and a nutty, purple-tinged multigrain. Topped with miso ssam sauce, each bite is a fresh burst of uplifting textures.

Southern cuisine and soul food have always been good, but good for you? Enter chef Shenarri Freeman, who is remaking the classics with a vegan and plant-based twist at Cadence. Collard green wraps are filled with succotash and set in an umami-rich chickpea miso broth. Then, two large oyster mushrooms are fried and tossed in a buffalo sauce, served over a Belgian waffle and sided by lavender maple syrup for a take on chicken and waffles that's so good it's almost blasphemous.

On the menu, house-made pastas are a focus. There are also natural wines to accompany the seasonal, deftly executed vegan dishes. Toasted focaccia served in a miso bagna cauda is an umami-rich bite, tailed by tagliatelle tossed with nori "butter" sauce and broccoli rabe. Date cake with vanilla "gelato" gets a hit of black salt for delicious complexity.