Vegan Restaurants in Bangalore India | The Nomadic Vegan (2024)

Earlier this summer, I spent an incredible 10 days in southern India co-leading a vegan tour with Escape To. Our tour focused on mostly on Bangalore, and we also spent a few days in Pondicherry.

While I had traveled extensively in India before, I had never visited Bangalore, or Bengaluru as it’s now officially known.

To my delight, I discovered that Bangalore is the most vegan-friendly city in all of India! There are a handful of vegan restaurants in the city, as well as dozens of vegetarian restaurants. With so many veg options, I limited this guide to vegan and vegetarian restaurants and have not included any establishments that serve meat.

Here are my top picks of vegan restaurants in Bangalore, as well as vegan-friendly vegetarian restaurants and other vegan businesses and events happening in the city.

Vegan Restaurants in Bangalore

Carrots

Baked aubergine mushroom platter at Carrots vegan restaurant in Bangalore

Update April 2021: Sadly, Carrots was forced to close due to the pandemic. However, the owners are just as dedicated as ever to the vegan cause and are working hard to start something new. Check their Instagram account for the latest updates.

Carrots is a real pioneer in the Indian vegan movement. It was the very first vegan restaurant to open in the whole country! The restaurant is run by a couple of vegan Indian chefs, Susmitha and Ram.

Before opening Carrots, Susmitha was a well-known food blogger. You can still find all of her old recipes on her blog, Veganosaurus, and she sometimes posts new recipes on her Instagram account.

The menu at Carrots is an interesting mix of international dishes (vegan pizza, burgers, pasta, etc.) and veganized versions of classic lacto-vegetarian Indian dishes, like malai kofta and veg do pyaza. And then there are also fusion dishes, like the millet burrito and the almond pesto paella.

If you order in advance, they can also make veganized versions of traditional Indian desserts that normally contain ghee, like gajar halwa. It had been years since I had tasted gajar halwa, so I was thrilled to find a vegan version!

When our vegan tour group visited Carrots, Susmitha gave us a cooking class, and we ate a thali made up of the dishes we had learned to cook. I definitely want to go back one day and try some of the other dishes on the menu, like the baked aubergine mushroom platter pictured above.

JustBe Café

Pasta-free lasagna at JustBe Café

This upscale restaurant manages to have a very classy vibe without feeling snobby. On the contrary, the atmosphere is very calming and relaxing. Eating here is almost like meditating.

The menu consists mostly of international dishes with a healthy twist. The veggie lasagna, for example, is made with layers of veggies instead of pasta sheets. While I’m generally skeptical of pasta free lasagna, this one was very good, and so was the minestrone soup.

The real star of the show, though, was the brownie and ice cream sizzler for dessert! A brownie sizzler is something that I’d never seen before visiting Bangalore, but I soon found out that it’s quite popular there.

The brownie is served on a (very) hot iron skillet and topped with a scoop of ice cream. Chocolate syrup is then poured over the whole thing, and it sizzles as it hits the iron skillet. Hence the name “sizzler”!

Main dishes here cost between 350 and 392 rupees, which is a bit higher than average but to be expected in a high-caliber place like this.

Upstairs, attached to the café, is a sound bath area. This was also a new experience for me, and it was incredibly relaxing. Our group had a collective sound bath, where we all laid down on mats in a large room while the sound healing therapist played various musical instruments.

I’d love to come back and experience an individual sound bath session one day. The therapist showed us the room where she holds these sessions, and there were many other instruments there. In fact, even the bed you lie on is an instrument! It has strings underneath it, and the therapist plays it like a harp as you lie there. What a wonderful way to meditate!

Happy Healthy Me - The Tasting Room

Tofu biryani at The Tasting Room, the vegan café attached to Happy Healthy Me.

Happy Healthy Me is primarily an organic food store, where you can buy all kinds of spices, grains, pulses and superfoods. In fact, it’s the first 100% certified organic food brand and grocery store in the country.

Many of the superfoods grow locally in India, and some of them are virtually unknown in the West. The grains sold here include lots of “forgotten grains”, which are ancient varieties that used to be common in India but have gradually been forgotten about over the centuries. The owners of Happy Healthy Me are working to raise awareness about these healthy local whole foods.

While the store does sell milk products and is thus not completely vegan, the attached café called The Tasting Room is. The varied menu includes platters, thalis, burgers, salads, and Indian desserts like jaggery laddoos.

Our group had a tofu biryani with an eggplant sauce and raita made from peanut curd, which was delicious. Happy Healthy Me is located in the ritzy neighborhood of Indiranagar and is open only for breakfast and lunch.

House of Seitan

A quick, drive-by glance at the House of Seitan in Indiranagar, Bangalore

House of Seitan is also located in Indiranagar, but unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to eat there. We just happened to pass by it on our way to Happy Healthy Me. Intrigued, I quickly snapped a pic and resolved to find out more about it.

Turns out, House of Seitan is a fully vegan bistro that serves healthy versions of burgers and other foods commonly thought of as “junk food”. Their burgers, salads and sandwiches are made with seitan instead of meat.

This is rather unusual in India, where plant-based meats are not very popular. A large portion of the population is vegetarian for religious reasons, so recreating the taste and texture eating meat is unappealing to them.

But it’s good to see the folks at House of Seitan trying something different! The food photos on their website look great, and I’d love to give it a try the next time I’m in Bangalore.

Vegetarian Restaurants in Bangalore

Green Theory

Meze platter at Green Theory

This is a rather fancy vegetarian restaurant that serves mostly international cuisine along with a few Indian dishes. They hosted our group’s welcome dinner on the first night of our trip, and it was a great start to an incredible culinary experience in India.

Green Theory offered us a tasting menu of quite a few of their dishes, including a meze platter, a spicy tomato and moringa soup, a green Thai curry, an Indian spinach curry, a Mexican tofu dish, and an apple tart and date chocolate mousse for dessert.

For me, the highlights were the green curry and the apple tart. I also really enjoyed the ambiance of this chic, plant-filled space.

The Green Path - Forgotten Food

The Green Path "Organic State" is much more than just a restaurant.

The Green Path is located northwest of the city center in the historic Malleshwaram district, just opposite the Mantri metro station. It’s a very large complex which the owners call the “Organic State”.

Obviously, the focus is on organic food, and inside is a large buffet restaurant upstairs, a smaller café downstairs, an organic shop, a terrace garden, and a play area for children. Our group ate at the Forgotten Food multi-cuisine organic restaurant upstairs.

Green Path was the first eco-conscious and organic restaurant and initiative in Bangalore, before it became a trendy thing. They are the pioneers of organic food in India, and they belive in reviving the country's "forgotton foods" that in recent decades have been discarded in favor of white rice and imported foods.

This is an unapologetically Indian institution, so you won't find any Western dishes here. They've been operating for about 20 years and have done surpringly well in a very traditional and conservative part of Bangalore.

Every day they offer a buffet with a wide variety of north and south Indian dishes. They do use dairy products in some of their dishes, so be sure to ask which ones are vegan.

For our group, they made a special vegan version of a local Bangalore dessert called holige, which was very tasty! They also run an eco-hotel in the north of the city, which sounds like a lovely place to stay.

Konark

The Kanteerava branch of Konark offers great southern Indian breakfast dishes, like this onion uttapam.

The tagline of this popular South Indian vegetarian restaurant “the green side of dining”. They have been around since 1985 and have several branches in the city.

I first visited their Residency Road location, where I tried their specialty, the pessarat dosa. This is a special dosa made from a dough of mung beans instead of fermented rice. I also enjoyed other popular dishes like gobi Manchurian and rava idli.

Konark is a typical, no-nonsense Indian pure veg restaurant and is a bit cheaper than some of the trendier restaurants listed in this article. They do offer a candlelit dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though, so it can still be a good option for a romantic date night.

A few days later, I also visited their Kanteerava location in the sports complex near Cubbon Park. This is more of a quick, budget-minded eatery and is a great place to come for an authentic South Indian breakfast.

Enerjuvate

Have you ever seen such colorful momos?!

This cozy café serves Indian as well as international dishes, both with a healthy twist. It was here that I got my first taste of poha and upma, which are both naturally vegan and are popular breakfast foods in southern India.

The upma here is made from millet instead of the usual semolina or rice flour, so it’s healthier but tastes a bit different from the classic version.

Other dishes our group enjoyed here included the Thukpa Twist, a Tibetan soup made with fresh flat ragi noodles, and the momo tasting platter, a colorful assortment of Tibetan dumplings.

Enerjuvate was also where I was first introduced to the mind-blowing concept of a sizzling brownie!

Global Krishna Leela

Veg curry with roti at Global Krishna Leela

This is a very typical, budget-friendly Indian vegetarian restaurant. The décor is pretty simple and it can get a bit noisy, but the price is right and there are lots of dishes to choose from on the menu.

If you are visiting the People for Animals Wildlife Hospital, which I highly recommend, Global Krishna Leela is conveniently located close by. Otherwise, it’s quite far from the city center, so you wouldn’t want to make a special trip just to eat here.

The menu includes both northern and southern Indian dishes, such as idlis and lots of different veg curries. They can make pretty much any vegetarian dish vegan on request, too. As always, though, be clear about which ingredients you don't eat, i.e. ghee, curd, cream, paneer, etc.

Read more about ghee and other common dairy products in India and how to avoid them.

A2B - Adyar Ananda Bhavan

Puri is just one of the many vegan dishes available at A2B

This is a large chain of vegetarian restaurants with 140 locations across the country, mainly in South India. You’ll often find them along the highway, so they can be convenient stops when road-tripping across India.Our group stopped at a couple of different A2B locations between Bangalore and Pondicherry.

In Bangalore, you’ll find two near the center and one out towards the airport. Here you can expect quick service and authentic south Indian food at budget-friendly prices.

We had a blast ordering as many different dishes as possible, trying to taste all the vegan Indian dishes. You’ll find lots of southern Indian favorites here, many of which are naturally vegan.

Some dishes we tried here are poori masala, onion uttapam, masala dosa and rava dosa. The latter is made with semolina instead of the usual rice and lentil batter.

Santé Spa Cuisine

Creative, healthy food at Santé Spa Cuisine

Unfortunately, I had to leave India a day earlier than the rest of the group, so I missed out on dining at Santé Spa Cuisine. My travel buddies all raved about it, though, so I’m adding it to this list so that you don’t have to miss out like I did.

Santé Spa is an Indian chain of organic vegetarian restaurants that focuses on healthy food. The menu is full of smoothie bowls, salads and energizing juices, along with several types of pizza made with a base of millet and whole wheat.

There’s also a pretty good selection of international dishes, like stir frys and pasta dishes, all with a healthy twist. Definitely one to try next time!

Go Native

Paddu from Go Native

Go Native is a farm-to-table café and restaurant that’s all about eating mindfully and sustainably. All their fruits and vegetables are sourced from organic farms near Bangalore.

In addition, the grains, legumes, spices and oils they use are sourced from farms within a 500km radius that follow eco-friendly and fair trade practices. For health-conscious eaters, this is a great place to try some traditional local dishes with a healthy twist.

The paddu pictured above are just one of the many local delicacies we tried here. These crispy dumplings made from rice and moong dal flour are stuffed with sweet corn, chillies and onions. They are delicious when dunked in tomato chutney!

Map of Vegan Bangalore

Below is a Google Map of all the vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Bangalore described in this guide. If you have a Google account, you can add it to "Your Places" to have access to it from your computer or your phone through the Google Maps app.

Our group meeting with the staff of Goodmylk in Bangalore

This inspiring local Bangalore company is run by vegan activists whose mission is to provide affordable, tasty and nutritious alternatives to dairy products in India. They currently offer cashew and oat milk, peanut curd, butter and mayonnaise. You can order directly from their website and have the products delivered straight to your accommodation.

Bangalore Vegan Potluck

A group of dedicated vegans, including Chef Susmitha from Carrots, have been organizing regular vegan potlucks in Bangalore for several years. Anyone is welcome to join; the only requirement is that you bring a vegan dish to share. This could be a dish you made yourself or something you bought.

Potlucks usually take place on the last Saturday of the month. Write to bengaluruvegans@gmail.com to find out when and where the next one will be.

Raw Vegan Dinners with Samyukta Kartik

Samyukta describes herself as a culinary visual artist. She is a raw chef who trained at the Matthew Kenney Culinary Institute.

In addition, she organizes raw vegan pop-up dinners and other events around Bangalore. Follow her on Instagram to find out when her next event will be.

There is a budding network of vegan home cooks in India, and as a traveler you can even order food delivered directly from their home kitchen to your hotel room.

In other countries this would no be possible because of food health code restrictions, but India operates by different rules.

This allows many more vegan cooks (especially women) to run food businesses out of their homes. Prachi of Escape To pointed out to me how this sets the Indian vegan scene apart from many Western countries, where home cooking is not legal.

Towards the end of our tour, one of these home cooks, who goes by the Instagram handle @ilivecrueltyfree, kindly offered our group some vegan fudge that she had made herself. It was yummy!

Woolly Moth Initiatives

Woolly Moth is the brainchild of Meghana Rajanahally, who creates various initiatives around Bangalore to build a more compassionate world. She usually organizes vegan markets around Bangalore every two months or so. Follow Woolly Moth on Instagram to find out about the latest events.

Escape To

I had an amazing trip with Escape To and these vegan tree huggers

And last but certainly not least is Escape To. These are the folks who made my trip to India possible!

Bangalore-based Escape To provides vegan travel tours, vegan adventures and volunteer abroad programs for vegan travelers wanting to visit India.

Sustainability-minded entrepreneurs Prachi Jain and Pradeep Krishnappa are passionate about supporting and growing the vegan community in India through international travelers who visit, support and spread the message of sustainable vegan travel. Click here to explore upcoming vegan tours in Bangalore and beyond.

Bangalore even has it's very own vegan hostel! Be Animal Hostel was created as a space for travelers, environmental enthusiasts and lovers of nature from all over the world to come together and share stories.

A breakfast of vegan Indian food is served every morning, and the team here also organizes eco-friendly tours in India and beyond throughout the year.

Click here to see photos and read reviews of Be Animal Hostel.

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