Finding places with vegetarian/vegan dishes in Japan/Tokyo can be a difficult task. Being vegetarian is not quite understood or common in Japan. Going into a restaurant and asking for something without meat or fish sounds easy, but it is not. What the restaurant then usually offers is a chicken dish (chicken is not seen as meat as it is a white meat). So we have decided it is time to find some purely vegetarian/vegan restaurants in Tokyo. Here are three we enjoy (a lot). It took us a while to find these restaurants, so we thought we might save you some time trying to find something vegetarian/vegan in Tokyo. We hope you love them as well :).
BROWN RICE
The first restaurant is a little place just off Omotesando Street (close to Harajuku), called Brown Rice (http://www.nealsyard.co.jp/brownrice/). They serve Japanese style vegan meal seats, also known as washoku seats. Brown Rice serves three different dishes, one is always a Japanese style curry dish, the other a tofu dish served with rice, miso soup and pickles. The tofu dish is different depending on the day. The third dish served is a boiled vegetables basket dish, served with rice, miso soup and pickles. The meal sets are between 1,300-1,700 yen. They are open for lunch and afternoon cake. Closing time is 6pm. If you are a vegetarian but do not want to miss out on the Japanese meal experience, this place is definitely a must go to! We love their food and could go back every week.
Rice and curry with seasonal vegetables
Boiled vegetables meal set
ABURAAGE
The second restaurant we tried and highly recommend (though their opening times are very limited) is the macrobiotic café Aburaage (http://r.goope.jp/aburaage/about), located just a few stops away from Haneda Airport, in Anamori-inari, a residential area Tokyo’s. This is a bit out of the way if you are located in centeral Tokyo. Anamori-inari is a 20min train journey from Shinagawa, on the Keisei line. Aburaage is a vegan macrobiotic place, very local. They serve lunch and cake. Lunch is priced from 900-2700 yen. Japanese meal sets as well as Japanese noodle soup is on their menu. Coming here the first time took us a little bit longer as we got lost along the way and were not quite sure what it looked like from the outside. It was worth powering through and not giving up on our mission to find this place.
On the left the noodle soup with cashew nuts, vegetables and a sesame soup. On the right their vegetable set.
The outside of the café.
L’ATELIER DE MAISON DE CAMPAGNE
The last place on our list of recommendations for vegetarian/vegan places in Tokyo is a newly discovered restaurant in Jiyugaoka. L’atelier de maison de campagne (http://www.lateliermaisoncampagne.com/) is a little restaurant serving freshly prepared meal sets, one anti-pasti and a pasta dish. As a light dish they serve a soup and their bread is fantastic. This is a very cute place, Western style food, one person cooking the meals and the presentation is beautiful. Prices for a meal seat are about 1,600 yen. After the meal hot roasted tea is served as part of the set.
Colourful and beautifully prepared vegetable lasagne
Minestrone soup
These are some of our recommendations for our favourite vegetarian/vegan places. Another place that makes good vegetarian food is the chain restaurant T’s (http://www.nre.co.jp/Portals/0/shop/tantan/). We are on a mission to find more amazing vegetarian/vegan restaurants and if we find anymore worth mentioning we will be sharing the information. For now, these are fantastic places, look no further for vegetarian food, go ahead and try one (or all) of these, we definitely will be back to all of them, yummy!
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