Long gone are the days of vegans and vegetarians being relegated to side dishes at restaurants.
Eight all-vegan kitchens made this list: a downtown diner, a Clintonville deli, two bakeries, a plant-based butcher counter, a cafe on Indianola Avenue, a bookstore with a weekend kitchen and a comfort-food spot in Westerville. Nothing on their menus needs a substitution. Five more restaurants aren’t all-vegan but mark the vegan dishes on the menu, so the vegan at the table orders straight off it like everyone else. Dish names come from each restaurant’s own menu, and addresses from its own site.
Downtown’s vegan diner does breakfast all day and burgers and melts, with house-made egg in the omelettes and tofu bacon on the loaded fries. There are diner-style milkshakes, too. They also have a great kids’ menu for the little vegans in your life.
Item to try: Get the patty melt. Everything about it tastes good, but it’s really pushed over the edge by the sriracha horseradish aioli.
Location: 152 E. State St., Downtown
Website: 4th and State
Seitan’s Realm is a badass vegan deli. The seitan and the sauces are made from scratch every day, and the sandwich board has a meatball sub, pepperoni rolls, a gyro and biscuits and gravy on it.
Item to try: The Rick Reuben, Seitan’s Realm’s version of the traditional Reuben sandwich, is always an epic choice.
Location: 3496 N. High St., Clintonville
Website: Seitan’s Realm
Everything Pattycake bakes is vegan and from scratch, and that covers cupcakes and cookies as well as whoopie pies and muffins. Pierogi Mountain downtown gets some of its desserts here, too.
Item to try: Pattycake Bakery is home to my favorite version of carrot cake in the city, so get a Carrot Cake Cupcake and fall in love.
Location: 3870 N. High St., Clintonville
Website: Pattycake Bakery
Two Dollar Radio publishes books, and the cafe inside its storefront cooks an all-vegan menu Friday through Sunday. The meat substitutes and the nut cheeses are made in-house, and the menu covers pancake tacos, empanadas, falafel pitas and birria “beef” tacos. If you’d rather cook it at home, the publisher’s own cookbook is the Two Dollar Radio Guide to Vegan Cooking.
Item to try: The “Sausage, Egg & Cheeze” Tortuga rolls walnut sausage, scramble, cashew crema, avocado and pickled onions into a flour tortilla and puts hollandaise over the top.
Location: 1124 Parsons Ave., South Side
Website: Two Dollar Radio HQ
The whole menu at Portia’s is gluten-free as well as vegan. Breakfast is served all day, so the Breakfast Burrito Bowl (cheezy tofu egg, roasted potatoes, black beans, guacamole and coconut bacun) works at lunch too. The menu also has a spinach-artichoke dip built on pureed cashews and a sunflower-and-walnut pate it calls Notuna.
Item to try: Order the Flatchos Supreme, local corn chips and vegan cheese pressed on the grill until the cheese melts and the chips crisp, then topped with black beans, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, black olives, onions and jalapenos. It comes in half and full orders.
Location: 4428 Indianola Ave., Clintonville
Website: Portia’s Cafe
Vida’s makes its own plant-based deli meats, sausages and cheeses, and the sandwiches are built from the case: a Philly cheesesteak, a hot ham and cheese, a BLT and a chickpea salad on sourdough. Gemüt Biergarten’s veganwurst and vegan Reuben use Vida’s meats, too. The shop is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
Item to try: Vida’s Reuben stacks cured corned beef, provolone, grilled sauerkraut and thousand island on rye.
Location: 1724 Northwest Blvd. Unit C, Fifth by Northwest
Website: Vida’s Plant-Based Butcher
Happy Little Treats moved out of its Short North space on North High Street and into a bigger one on West Third Avenue, with seating and a parking lot this time. The bakery is 100 percent vegan and open seven days a week. The preorder list has “butter” croissants, chocolate babka, Buckeye brookies and cinnamon pull-aparts on it.
Item to try: Get a croissant. The bakery sells them plain, chocolate, almond, cinnamon, pesto and hot honey ham, and the plain one is listed as “butter” in quotation marks because there’s no butter in it.
Location: 1043 W. Third Ave., Fifth by Northwest
Website: Happy Little Treats
The owners of Can’t Believe It’s Vegan picked Westerville because it had no all-vegan restaurant, and they say theirs is still the only 100 percent vegan restaurant in the northeast corner of central Ohio. The menu is comfort food: a BBQ jackfruit sandwich with house fries, noCrab cakes made from chickpeas and mushrooms, a spicy tofu quinoa bowl and a Sunday brunch.
Item to try: The CBIV Ribs are jackfruit in the chef’s seasoning blend under a house-made spicy barbecue sauce, and the menu bills them as central Ohio’s best vegan rib.
Location: 584 W. Schrock Rd., Westerville
Website: Can’t Believe It’s Vegan
Comune’s evening menu is à la carte, with a (v) beside every vegan dish. Right now that includes a koji pita with three seasonal spreads and a walnut-mushroom bolognese over pappardelle.
Item to try: The mushroom frites (v, gf) put lion’s mane mushroom in sauce au poivre with housemade fries on the side.
Location: 677 Parsons Ave., Schumacher Place
Website: Comune
Paulie Gee’s is one of my favorite pizza spot suggestions in the city, and the menu has a Vegan Pizza section of its own, built on a housemade cashew ricotta. One thing it doesn’t do is gluten-free pizza.
Item to try: If you’re feeling adventurous, order the Trustfall. It’s a sort of surprise pizza where the chef gets to choose your toppings. Don’t worry, you can specify that you’d like it vegan.
Location: 1195 N. High St., Short North
Website: Paulie Gee’s
Most of the Pierogi Mountain menu is tagged Vegan, including a housemade seitan kielbasa, a mac and cheese, a seitan schnitzel sandwich and all of the desserts, which come from Pattycake Bakery and Maslo. Pierogi are sold by the piece.
Item to try: Start with the Potato, Sauerkraut & Mushroom pierogi, which the menu calls its most popular vegan pierogi. It’s shiitake mushrooms, sauerkraut, russet potatoes, onion and garlic.
Location: 105 N. Grant Ave., Downtown
Website: Pierogi Mountain
Messobe, in Grandview Heights, has an Ethiopian menu with beef, lamb, fish and eggs on it. A separate “Entrees (Vegan)” section lists the plant dishes, and the two main plates in it have a (V) after the name. The shiro is pressed split peas and chickpeas cooked with onions and tomatoes, and there are vegan sides of beets, kale, yellow split peas and yellow cabbage.
Item to try: The Veggie Combination (V) puts medium-spicy split lentils, yellow split peas, cabbage, potatoes, shiro and collard greens on one plate with a salad, topped with fresh rosemary.
Location: 1223 Goodale Blvd., Grandview Heights
Website: Messobe (online ordering)
The kitchen at SŌW Plated in Upper Arlington cooks a cashew mac with pimento cheese sauce, blistered shishitos, jackfruit tikka masala tacos and a cilantro pumpkin seed pesto pasta with truffle almond ricotta. The menu tags dishes [V], [VEG], [GF] or [DF], and all four of those dishes carry the [V].
Item to try: The Maple Sweet Chili Cauliflower [V|GF] roasts white and heirloom cauliflower with sweet potatoes under a bourbon maple chili glaze, finished with cashews and lime.
Location: 1625 W. Lane Ave., Upper Arlington
Website: SŌW Plated
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