The best vegan restaurants in Australia

Just 100 metres from Byron Bay’s beautiful beaches, No Bones is where the sun, surf and sustainability meet. Local veggies, fruits and native ingredients take centre stage on the fully vegan menu, with plenty of plant-based meat alternatives for even the most committed carnivores (trust us, they wouldn’t know it was vegan unless you told them). No Bones’ konjac calamari strips have stood the test of time, with their kung poo-glazed crispy chick’n being another long-time favourite. You won’t want to share the crispy duk pancakes, and the creamy truffle mac’n’cheese will have you dreaming of your next visit. 

For more than 15 years, Yulli’s has been one of the most reliably fun ports for vegan diners in Sydney (those money bags alone earn them repeat visits). Their sister venue in Byron Bay serves up an equally fabulous and flavour-packed menu, fusing modern Asian and Mediterranean cuisines. Yulli’s banquet menu is one of the best vegan dining deals in the country, featuring all their greatest hits like edamame and coconut money bags and Korean fried broccolini, plus seasonal mains and a decadent dessert to finish. Pair your feast with vegan wines and quirky cans from their brewery in Alexandria (which also serves up a fully vegan menu).

This tiny, minimalist Japanese snack house on King Street – Sydney’s unofficial ‘Vegan Mile’ – is a favourite of our Travel & News Editor Melissa Woodley. By day, Comeco Foods draws crowds for its gluten-free sourdough doughnuts, creative sushi rolls and colourful onigiri lunch plates. But on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, the café transforms into a cosy dinner spot, serving up hearty Japanese katsu curries, crispy tempura rice bowls and comforting tan tan ramen. 

It’s been five years since this sunflower-yellow Potts Point fine diner boldly ditched meat from its menu – well before it was trendy – but you'll forget it was ever the star of the show as you make your way through a seasonal six-course tasting menu. Head chef Sander Nooij calls his culinary approach ‘botanical gastronomy’, where he aims to celebrate the vibrant flavours and textures of plants, herbs and flowers. Dishes change with the seasons, but your night might begin with a crisp polenta chip crowned with avocado salsa, move onto an eggplant parcel with hemp ricotta and chilli crisp, and finish with a playful take on banoffee pie made using bananas from Boon Luck Farm.

Could Ballard's be the Melbourne vegan community's best-kept secret? Our favourite thing about this curious High Street bar in Thornbury is that it’s not only fully plant-based, cheap-as-chips and well-stocked with good booze, it's also offering dishes that are much more refined than may first meet the eye. The food is seriously good here, and the cooks sure know what they're doing. Think Ottolenghi-tier broccolini, chargrilled lion’s main steaks and creative desserts that wouldn't look out of place in a swanky bistro. The owner's social media accounts are also hilarious. Check out Ballard's Insta to get a feel for the vibe.

Sichuan-born chef and owner Shu Liu coincidentally shares a name with the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) – the official measure of chilli’s firepower – and his food brings the heat in all the right ways. Set inside an ultra-moody warehouse in Collingwood, Shu celebrates regional Chinese cooking with an experimental, plant-based twist. His ten-course vegan degustation flips a traditional Chinese banquet on its head, with a more casual à la carte Pick n Shu’s menu and unlimited weekend yum cha. Look forward to anything from Yu Xiang roasted eggplant, kohlrabi-wrapped plant-based mince dumplings and matcha cashew cream-filled chocolate cannoli. 

No list of Australia’s best vegan restaurants would be complete without this Fitzroy icon from the poster child of plant-based dining, Shannon Martinez. In 2014, the rockstar chef – who’s actually not vegan – opened Smith + Daughters as a friendly Italian fine-ish diner. Now, a decade on, it’s been reimagined as a more casual social club, with fun snacks like jerk oyster mushroom skewers, smoked fried potatoes, baked mac and cheese, and a plant-based spin on smoked barbecue brisket.

Melbourne’s first and only all-vegan pizzeria does away with the below-average-vegan pizza stigma by making its own mock meats (try the pepperoni) and cheeses (witch-crafted with coconut oil and tapioca) that could fool your everyday omnivore. It's a glorious thing to pick up a slice of fresh-out-of-the-wood-fired-oven margherita, and not be confronted by an unlikeable vegan cheese. Red Sparrow's version sees creamy white fior di latte (dairy free, of course) sitting atop a tangy, slightly sweet San Marzano tomato base that calls for applause. The crust is thin, lightly charred and just the right amount of chew. 

If you’re looking to eat the rainbow, your pot of gold awaits at Vega Café. This welcoming, dog-friendly café brings the bold, comforting flavours of Thailand to Brisbane’s Spring Hill, serving up all-day brunch and a special dinner menu from Wednesday to Saturday nights. You’ll find classics like fresh rice paper rolls, spicy tom yum soup, steaming red curries and comforting char kwai teow, alongside Western-inspired dishes – think a plant-based take on fish and chips and their signature red curry arancini.

If you like your dinner in as many styles as backpackers like passport stamps, head to this breezy vegan café in Burleigh Waters. Doko demo means ‘anywhere’ in Japanese, and the V stands for ‘vegan’ – meaning you’ll find fully plant-based food from all around the world. You could kick off your night in Southeast Asia with laksa and hokkien noodles, then take an Italian detour with mushroom mince lasagne or chick’n pesto pizza. America gets a shoutout with a classic cheeseburger or footlong hot dog, while other crowd-pleasers like poke bowls and falafel wraps keep the world tour rolling.

In the heart of Adelaide, this cosy 28-seat fine diner makes for a dreamy date night – that just so happens to be entirely plant-based. But don’t expect faux meat substitutes here. Each dish on the set menu is designed from the ground up to reflect the season. The result is a sophisticated dining experience that never fails to delight vegans and omnivores alike with its next-level inventive fare. Flavour combinations you would least expect somehow work in ways unexplainable – take, for example, the coffee dip with Jerusalem artichoke chips, and the porcini-port jelly with spent sourdough. 

Once voted the world’s fifth-best vegan food truck by Lonely Planet, Staazi and Co has become an Adelaide institution for vegans and meat-eaters alike. The laid-back corner shop, just a short stroll from Adelaide Botanic Garden, grills up a tight selection of yiros featuring plant-based lamb and chicken or falafels, all smothered in homemade tzatziki and wrapped in a toasted pita with chips and slaw. Along with their brick-and-mortar store, you can rely on Staazi and Co’s food truck to pop up at all of Adelaide’s major events.

Au Lac Dickson is Canberra’s rebuttal to the vegetally challenged, with twirls of Southeast Asian flavours giving this vegan restaurant more than a leg to stand on. Chinese cuisine has honoured the animal-free rituals of the Buddhist religion for centuries, so the offering of soy-based substitutes is, of course, sensationally succulent. From everything crispy, sizzling, steamed and stir-fried, there is no tofu-sion when it comes to pleasing its clientele. Not to mention budget san choy baos, meaning you can actually go dancing after this one.