Vegan brunch in London has stopped being a compromise. There is now a Michelin-starred plant-based kitchen in Shoreditch, an open-fire vegetable menu in Notting Hill and a Caribbean carvery in Spitalfields. Smashed avocado on sourdough is the least interesting thing on offer.
The city’s plant-based cooking has changed shape in the last two years. The all-day cafes that carried it through the 2010s are still here and still good, but the best eating has moved to kitchens doing proper cooking rather than substitution: vegetables over fire, fermented sauces, pastry made with butter churned in-house from oats.
What follows is fifteen places we would actually send someone for brunch or breakfast, sorted by how you would use them. Twelve are fully plant-based. Three are not, and we have said so rather than fudging it, because turning up at a vegetarian restaurant expecting a vegan menu is a bad morning.
Open all day, every day
WAVE, Hackney
11 Dispensary Lane, E8 1FT · breakfast served all day · walk-in
We Are Vegan Everything started as a market cake stand called Cupcakes and Shhht back in 2012, which is why the counter here is still better than the kitchen has any need to be. Cait and Soph turned it into a bricks-and-mortar cafe in Hackney and it has been the most reliably good plant-based breakfast in east London ever since.
Breakfast runs all day, which is the whole point of it. The Brekky Bowl is the order, mushrooms and all, and the Sunny Side, at £16.90, is the bigger version with scrambled tofu, garlic kale and cashew hollandaise on sourdough. The Golden Roasted Salad is the sleeper if you come later.
Sit in the back yard if the sun is out. It is a genuine suntrap and there are perhaps six tables in it, so go early. More of the neighbourhood in our guide to Hackney restaurants.
Kin, Fitzrovia
22 Foley Street, W1W 6DT · Mon to Fri from 8.30am, weekends from 9.30am
Kin has been quietly feeding Fitzrovia plant-based breakfast for years and is the one we send people to when they want vegan food without a concept attached. It is fully plant-based, everything can be made gluten-free, and the portions are larger than the room suggests.
The waffles are the real reason to go and always have been. If you want the cheap order, the oat porridge with cinnamon, banana, coconut milk and berry compote is £8, which in a W1 postcode in 2026 is close to a mistake. The açaí bowl is £12.
Note the rebrand: it now trades as Kin London on a new domain, so the old bookmark will not work. Reservations are worth making at weekends.
The Gallery Cafe, Bethnal Green
St Margaret’s House, 21 Old Ford Road, E2 9PL · breakfast 9am to noon, 1pm at weekends · card only
The cafe of St Margaret’s House, an east London community hub that also runs exhibitions and a garden, and the least pretentious entry on this list. Fully plant-based, and priced like it means it: you are not paying fifteen pounds for an undersized portion of avocado on toast here.
The vegan full English is the thing to order, with the pancakes as the sweet alternative. There is a weekday coffee-and-pastry deal if you are just passing.
Two practical notes. It is walk-ins only, no reservations, and it takes card only. Hours have been listed three different ways across its own pages, so if you are travelling for it, check before you go. The outside seating is the best part on a warm morning. It is also dog-friendly, which the rest of Bethnal Green mostly is not.
The Fields Beneath, Kentish Town
52A Prince of Wales Road, NW5 3LN · from 7.30am weekdays, 8am Saturday, 9am Sunday
The earliest opening on this list, which makes it the answer if you actually want breakfast rather than brunch. Fully vegan since 2017, and it roasts its own Costa Rican coffee, rotating the beans so the cup is different every few weeks.
It is a coffee shop doing breakfast properly rather than a sit-down brunch service: sandwiches, bagels, wraps. The mushroom gyros in Lebanese flatbread is the order, or the roasted tofu wrap with sesame tahini. Both are under a tenner and both are better than they sound written down.
Inside is all plants and cheerful staff, and it is two minutes from Kentish Town West. It is the best of Camden’s cafes for this sort of thing, and there is more nearby in our Kentish Town restaurants guide.
Mildreds, King’s Cross and Covent Garden
200 Pentonville Road, N1 9JP and 79 St Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4AA · daily from 9am
Mildreds went fully vegan and now runs five London sites, and the two that matter for breakfast are King’s Cross and Covent Garden, both open from nine every day. Weekday breakfast runs until eleven, then weekend brunch takes over.
The first thing you notice is the plating, which is far more considered than a room this busy needs: colour thrown across the plate, sauce dragged, garnish with a bit of flare. It backs it up. The full English is £16, the meze brunch the same, the double-stack pancakes £12.50, and the porridge £7. Get the toasties stuffed with spiced masala aloo if they are on.
Covent Garden is step-free and dog-friendly and does pre-theatre from noon, which makes it the safe recommendation if you are booking for a group. More in our Covent Garden brunch guide.
Weekend brunch worth planning around
Holy Carrot, Notting Hill and Spitalfields
156 Portobello Road, W11 2EB and 61 to 63 Brushfield Street, E1 6AA · brunch Saturday and Sunday from 10.30am
The most ambitious plant-based cooking in west London, and the reason Notting Hill has not missed Farmacy as much as it should have. The menu was built with Daniel Watkins of ACME Fire Cult, and the kitchen cooks vegetables over open fire rather than reaching for substitutes.
The dishes to look for are the smoked carrot with harissa sunflower seed butter at £17, the coal-roasted leeks at £12 and the hen of the woods at £19. The koji flatbread at £9 is what to order if you want to understand the kitchen in one go.
Brunch runs Saturday and Sunday from half ten, and the Spitalfields branch keeps going until eight on Sundays. Book through SevenRooms. Go at opening rather than one o’clock, when Portobello is impassable.
Love Shack, Cambridge Heath
Arch 298 to 299 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9HA · brunch Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 3pm only
A fully vegan restaurant and cocktail bar in a railway arch, and the best late-morning weekend brunch in east London. The romantic, low-lit room is wasted at eleven in the morning, which is part of the appeal.
The Shack-Shuka is the brunch order. Outside brunch hours we would point you at the Good Karma Shawarma Flatbread, which is the dish we keep going back for, washed down with a pineapple and jalapeño margarita. The Pirate Teeth smoothie is the non-alcoholic one worth having.
Brunch is a narrow window, eleven to three, Saturday and Sunday only. Every other day it is evenings, and on Fridays it runs until three in the morning. Cash is preferred and Amex is not taken. Groups of fifteen and over have to pre-order.
Peachy Goat, Herne Hill
16 Half Moon Lane, SE24 9HU · brunch Saturday and Sunday
Behind a window strung with fairy lights on Half Moon Lane sits one of our favourite vegan restaurants anywhere in London, and one that converts committed carnivores without making a fuss about it. Italian-leaning, entirely plant-based, intimate and laid-back.
The weekend brunch is the reason it is here: bacon and pecan French toast, sweetcorn fritters, and deep-fried camembert bites that are better than any of us expected. Come back for dinner and order the orecchiette ragù or the trofie pesto with grilled asparagus, with a glass of red from a wine list that is genuinely good.
It has been going since early 2020 and is still under-visited for what it is. More of the neighbourhood in our Dulwich restaurants guide.
Mallow, Borough Market
1 Cathedral Street, SE1 9DE · daily from 9am
The default plant-based brunch south of the river, in a glass-fronted room on the edge of Borough Market, and 100% plant-based throughout. It opens at nine every day, which very little around the market does.
The crème brûlée brioche French toast is the dish people come back for, and the plant-based full English holds its own. The brunch cocktails are better than the format usually delivers.
Book through SevenRooms, particularly at weekends, when the market outside makes walking in a gamble. It is worth knowing that the brunch menu is not published online, so you are going in slightly blind on price. Come out of the front door and you are thirty seconds from the best market food in London, which is either a bonus or a planning problem.
Pipoca, Brixton
224 Brixton Road, SW9 6AH · fully vegan cafe and low-waste shop
Half vegan deli, half zero-waste grocer, and the plant-based brunch Brixton still has now that Cafe Van Gogh has gone. The ethics are not a veneer here: the shop sells unpackaged pasta, rice and cereals, and regulars bring their own containers.
The chickpea, potato and carrot mezze bowl with roasted vegetables, sourdough and pesto is the hearty order, and it is one of the better-value plates in SW9. There is a Crunchy Nut crepe with peanut butter, chocolate and banana if you want the indulgent version, and a Mexican breakfast with tofu scramble.
It also does some of the best coffee on Brixton Road, which our Brixton cafe guide gets into. Hours move around, so ring ahead if you are crossing town. Bring a Tupperware.
Not brunch, but you should know about them
Plates, Shoreditch
320 Old Street, EC1V 9DR · Wednesday to Saturday, lunch 12pm to 4pm
The first vegan restaurant in Britain to win a Michelin star, awarded in February 2025 and retained in the 2026 guide. Kirk Haworth’s kitchen is the single strongest argument that plant-based cooking in London has outgrown its own category.
There is no brunch, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What there is, and what nobody seems to use, is the lunch sitting: Wednesday to Saturday, noon until four, and considerably more gettable than dinner. It is the affordable way in, relatively speaking.
Book through TheFork or ring 020 7096 1307, and book a long way out. Closed Sunday to Tuesday. If you are making a day of it in Shoreditch, our Shoreditch brunch guide covers the morning.
Unity Diner, Spitalfields
60 Wentworth Street, E1 7AL · Tuesday to Sunday from noon · Sunday carvery only
Worth two corrections before anything else. It is in Spitalfields, not Hoxton, and has been since 2019. And it closed in February 2025 and reopened that April, so the guides still listing it as dead are wrong.
It opens at noon, so this is not a brunch venue. It is here for one reason: Sunday, when the kitchen does nothing but what it bills as the UK’s only vegan carvery. That is the meal to build a Sunday around, and you should book it.
The rest of the week, the tofish and chips at £19.80 and the döner are the orders. It is fully vegan and run as a non-profit, with profits going to Surge Sanctuary, which is a better reason to eat somewhere than most. Last Sunday bookings go at eight.
Okja, Spitalfields and Liverpool Street
29 Toynbee Street, E1 7NE and 31 Liverpool Street, EC2M 7PP · from 7.30am weekdays
The best plant-based pastry in London, and the entry to use when you want breakfast in your hand rather than on a plate. Okja is 100% plant-based and churns its own butter, cream cheese and chocolate spread in-house, which is why the laminated pastry works when almost no vegan viennoiserie does.
The swirls are the thing: cinnamon, pistachio, choco, almond frangipane, peanut butter and jam. The cinnamon one pictured above is the benchmark. There is monkey bread and a triple choc hazelnut cookie if you want to push it. Coffee runs £4.50 to £4.70.
It is takeaway, with a couple of benches outside the Toynbee Street original. The Liverpool Street site opened this year and is the only serious fully vegan bakery in the City. Orders go through their Slerp page rather than a website.
Mostly plant-based, and still worth your morning
Tendril, Mayfair
5 Princes Street, W1B 2LF · describes itself as “mostly vegan”
We reviewed Tendril when it took the leap from pop-up to permanent site, and the thing that stayed with us was the first course: a crispy potato cake with fennel remoulade and a white bean and chilli dip that arrived as a complete blindside. Neither of us was ready for how much flavour was in it.
It calls itself mostly vegan and we would rather quote that than dress it up. Look at a sample menu and two dishes out of seventeen fall outside vegan criteria, and both are clearly marked, usually because of feta or butter. The other fifteen are the reason to come. There is a vegan tiramisu, and yes, it works.
The discovery menu is the order if you want to understand the kitchen. Our full Tendril review has the detail, and it sits alongside the rest of the best vegan restaurants in London.
The Gate, Hammersmith
Temple Lodge, 51 Queen Caroline Street, W6 9QL · vegetarian with vegan options · brunch from noon at weekends
The last surviving branch of a group that once had four. Islington and Seymour Place have both gone, so if you have an old bookmark, this is the one that is left, almost hidden from view behind Hammersmith flyover in a Georgian house.
Be clear about what it is. The Gate is vegetarian with a long list of vegan options, not a vegan restaurant, and published brunch dishes include honeycomb ice cream. Ask at the table rather than assuming.
It leans fine dining, with smaller portions and careful presentation, and the homemade gnocchi is improbably creamy for a dish with no dairy in it. Save room for the chocolate orange mousse. Weekend brunch starts at noon, not in the morning, and the pancakes and the full English with facon rashers are the ones to look at. More context in our vegetarian restaurants guide.
How to plan a plant-based morning in London
- Nine o’clock is the real dividing line. Mildreds, Mallow and Kin open at or before nine. Holy Carrot, Love Shack and The Gate do not start until half ten or noon, which catches out anyone who set an alarm.
- Fully plant-based, or not? Twelve of the fifteen above are. Tendril and The Gate are not, and Cafe Petiole at Somerset House is “plant-first” rather than vegan, though its entire drinks list is. Worth asking anywhere not on this list.
- Book the weekends. Holy Carrot, Mallow and Mildreds all run on SevenRooms, Plates on TheFork, and Unity Diner’s Sunday carvery goes early.
- Walk-in only: The Gallery Cafe, WAVE and The Fields Beneath. The first two are card only or close to it.
- Names to cross off. Farmacy closed in July 2024, Cafe Van Gogh in June 2024 after nine years, and Wulf & Lamb has gone at both Chelsea and Marylebone despite a website that still looks open. Neat Burger has no UK sites left. The Gate is down to Hammersmith alone. Plenty of guides still list all of them.
For more plant-based eating across the city, our guides to vegan cafes in London, vegan afternoon teas and healthy restaurants pick up where this one stops, and the best breakfasts in London covers the omnivore side. Everything else is in our London restaurants guide.
The London x London Take: If you only do one, make it Holy Carrot on Portobello Road on a Saturday at half past ten, when the fire has been going for an hour and the room is still half empty. If you want the reliable version instead, Mildreds at King’s Cross opens at nine every day of the week and does a £16 full English, which makes it the only proper vegan breakfast within walking distance of a major terminus.
