Ecco Pizzeria – Headingley
Serving authentic Neapolitan pizza, Ecco is a highly environmentally concerned place to eat: they use wood fires to eliminate the use of gas and electric when cooking pizzas, they use LED lighting (aka energy saving bulbs), they compost their organic waste, and they hold free children’s classes every third Thursday of the month to teach them the importance of healthy eating and about caring for the environment. You can swap the cheese on any pizza for a vegan mozzarella and they offer a wide range of veggie toppings too – cool!
The Cat’s Pyjamas – Headingley
More Indian street food and craft beer – hoorah! The Cat’s Pyjamas serves 4 or 5 different vegan dishes in a cool, laid back setting. What’s not to like?
Sukothai – Headingley
For a more formal affair, try Sukothai serving up great Thai dishes in Headingley since 2007. Tofu, mixed veg dishes and steamed dumplings are all offered here as well as my absolute favourite dish of coconut rice. There are soooooo many vegan options here. Just make sure to emphasise that you are vegan and cannot have fish paste used in your curry, because sometimes that can be an area of misunderstanding in Thai restaurants.
Mardin – Hyde Park
Go to Mardin, or order a take-away if you’re looking for pizza or Turkish food. They base a lot of their vegan dishes around houmous, aubergine, and tabbouleh and there are so many choices including 5 variations of vegan mezze. Vegan pizza is on the menu once again. They also do vegan burgers: quinoa, meat imitation or falafel – with vegan cheese if you do so please!
Grove Café – Hyde Park
Grove Café is my go-to for curry, mainly because it is absolutely delicious and very reasonably priced, but also because they offer vegan naan bread. Pretty much all places make their naan with milk so it’s great to find a place where you can have it. I personally love the peshwari but they also do plain, or garlic naan. I would definitely recommend the vegan pasanda. Have you noticed I like coconut flavours yet? If you don’t fancy a curry, Grove Café offers vegan burgers and vegan pizzas too.
Hyde Park Book Club – Hyde Park
This place is amazing because it offers vegetarian and vegan food only. There’s brunch available until 4pm, as well as sandwiches and there’s even a vegan sharing platter: sun-dried tomatoes, houmous, avocado, olives, apple chutney, mixed leaves and crusty bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yes! Or, if you’re really hungry, get the veggie burger, or the Hot Special of the day which is always vegan and always gluten free. Fabulous.
Oranaise – Hyde Park
Oranaise is a Moroccan café with an astounding range of dishes. Tagines, cous cous, pizza, tapas, burgers, wraps, grills, mezze platters, kebabs and lots of Middle Eastern dishes. I absolutely love the tofu kebab, or I like the pepper burger with a quinoa patty, caramelised onion, grilled pepper and sweet chilli. They also do some great smoothies too.
May’s Thai – Hyde Park
May’s Thai Malaysian Café in Leeds is a BYOB* restaurant with extremely good prices and there’s plenty of dishes to choose from – just pick a base from the menu and choose to have it with tofu and vegetables – simple. There’s stir fried noodles, stir fried rice, curries, soups, and noodle soups. Open late until 10.30pm too.
*BYOB = Bring your own beer. May’s Thai charges a corkage fee.
All images are authors own.