The 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. 

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.

Chef Daniel Humm presides over this temple of modern elegance with a zealous dedication to masterful precision. Nothing is out of place and everything is custom made, from the staff’s suits to the handblown water vases.
The plant-based menu is a bold vision of luxury dining and elevates the concept to unparalleled heights. The freshly baked, delicately crisped vegan roll presented with faux butter is a magical creation. A quenelle of tonburi, mimicking caviar, plated with horseradish cream and accompanied by a radish tostada with a swipe of pumpkin seed butter is simply stunning. Toothsome braised seitan, wrapped in spinach and dressed with morels, is amplified with luscious sauce work.
Desserts, perhaps a frozen cherry blossom and rose confection dressed with strawberries, are equally accomplished.

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.

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.

What began with a handful of seats and vegetarian burgers has evolved with a new location and new menu. Brooks Headley's first-come, first-served spot, with vintage diner vibes, is squarely in the middle of the East Village and the new menu is equal parts quirky and contemporary, and fully vegetarian (even sometimes vegan). It's very creative, as in sweet and sour beets over jalapeño cream cheese and pretzels. Yes, it sounds weird, but it works. Cabbage filled with sticky rice and oyster mushrooms has plenty of character, and the burger crafted from quinoa, chickpeas, carrots and walnuts is how they made their name. All of the desserts are worth trying, especially the peanut butter pie and the seared malt cake with house-made cream cheese gelato that punches way above its weight.