Vegetarian restaurants that have come and gone

[Sherwil16]

I saw the thread asking about restaurants in London and started thinking about veggie restaurants in London from the 70s onwards when I first became vegetarian. These sprang to mind immediately
Manna in Erskine Road
Raw Deal off Baker Street
Food for Thought Neal St
Some more will come to me, but I'd really appreciate any that you can recall. Most of the old ones have closed or turned into vegan pretend meat places.

@TealReal was it on one of the side roads connecting Upper st and Essex Rd (Gaskin or Cross St).....was it an old Georgian/Victorian shopfront with a couple of steps up to the door on the LHS? V small and narrow inside. Loved Angel in the the 80's.

It’s probably my age, but this thread is making me so nostalgic for London in the 70s/80s/90s, when things felt quirkier and less corporate.

Thats was Blah Blah Blah
I think it moved to a different location and then shit down completely.

Not London but The Good Earth in Wells is fab and actually still open :)

Amen to that. Covent Garden before it went corporate. Another who loved Food for Thought.

A PP asked about one on Brewer St - was that Beatroot? I used to get their salad boxes for lunch.

I also remember a place in Vauxhall, possibly called Number 8 or something like that. Tucked away in a square, think you ate whatever they decided to cook that evening, there wasn’t a menu.

Oh Blah Blah Blah! I'd forgotten them. Yes this is also making me nostalgic.

Ooh yes Beatroot was lovely!

I loved Manna, i wasn't so keen on eat and 2 veg, loved the old Mildred's but did go to one of the new ones last night and it was excellent food but the service took a dip which was disappointing as our waitress finished half way through our time there.. diwana bhel puri house and ravi shanker are still on Drummond st near Euston. The Gate in St John's Wood was very good too and i haven't been to Stoke Newington in a while but used to regularly go to the fabulous pink Indian veg restaurant there - where is still old school vegetarian and not plant based??!

Mildred’s makes me cross now with its aggressive veganity.

And I’d forgotten all about Eat and Two Veg, even though I was a regular customer for a while!

Are you thinking of "8 Bonnington Square"?

That was a slightly off place, but I did like it. I think they were called a "supper club" rather than restaurant.

Other veggie restaurants that I miss:
The Red Herring - Newcastle u Tyne. Many drunken student nights in there, often full of medics.

The Armless Dragon - Cardiff. I'm not sure it was fully veg/vegan but had some excellent options for both.

Beanies, Leeds, right up the top of Briggate. I'm aware there are other places in Yorkshire with similar names, but they are not connected.

The Peppercorn, Huddersfield - they delivered our wedding anniversary meal in lockdown, but the lack of student presence put them out of business in the end.

The 'new' Greens in Sale has also just closed.

There's a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Sanskruti on Mauldeth Raod which is pretty good.

Spud-U-Like!

@FortunataTagnips yep me too- good times!! I took great pleasure last year on visiting son going to le mercury on upper st- another of our 'cheap ish' haunts and still there

I meant to tag @GrandesRandonnees re:8 Bonnington Square

I would only ever go to Wembley or Neasdon for vegetarian food.

I remember having a fabulous meal at Food For Friends in Brighton in the 1980s, and am glad to see that it is still going.

What I loved about vegetarian places was the freedom to select everything on the menu. What I increasingly find now is more non - vegetarian places offer fewer choices for non- meat eaters and often 'plant- based' is a description of ultra- processed pretend meat, so not at all what vegetarian food should be about.

I used to have lunch at Food For Thought every month when I was in London for work. It was fantastic. The Gate was our post-Sadler's Wells restaurant for years and I miss that too.

Cranks had a Covent Garden outpost. I remember eating relentlessly worthy quiche there and deciding to stick to Food for Thought for lunch in future, but the cookbooks were good.

Hansa's in Leeds closed in recent years, and is much missed. There's Bundobust and Manjit's, but they aren't quite the same.

Yes! Thank you!

Worthy quiche 😂 I know exactly what you mean.

I was reminiscing recently about the time when my mum tried to fob us off with carob bars for Easter, sometime in the 80s. “Just like chocolate!”. She didn’t try that again.

Homity pies that could double as paperweights.

Oh god, the carob years…

Hansa's in Leeds closed in recent years

Oh no

NRTFT but Govinda's off Oxford Street is still going. It gets mega-busy on Sundays. My daughter and I love it. It's been around since the 60s, I think.