Still an appetite for vegetable-based cuisine

Puraan is a small, family-owned Indian restaurant that serves up great value, tasty food in a friendly atmosphere just down the road from my house, so it’s been a favourite of my family’s for some years.

It’s also vegetarian. But that’s of little interest to me, because all the elements described above ultimately override the fact that it does not serve meat. Like roughly 97% of the population I’m not vegetarian – although I tend to eat only modest amounts of meat – and choose my restaurant visits based on the taste of the cuisine and the service/environment.

Over recent years, growing numbers of people have played around with eating more of a plant-based diet – sucked in by a desire for a healthier and more eco-friendly lifestyle. Sadly, this fuelled an influx of money supporting the creation of meat-mimicking products, with investment going into the production of things like fake burgers and sausages. Alongside this was funding for restaurant concepts whose menus were predominantly filled with dishes seeking to replicate meat through the use of odd plant-based ingredients that nobody had ever heard of.

These dishes have since been given the tag of ultra-processed foods (UPF), and nobody likes the idea of those. This has prompted McDonald’s to seriously strip back its vegetarian options to leave only the McPlant Burger, and Wagamama has culled various non-meat dishes from its menu. The lack of appetite for processed foods has also led to something of a car crash in the hospitality sector for many concepts including Ready Burger, The Vurger Co, Neat Burger and Wulf & Lamb.

Sadly, in the slipstream of these failures has been the closure of some genuine vegetarian restaurants that celebrated the vegetable such as Stem & Glory. Despite the tough backdrop, the market is arguably ripe for a new wave of vegetarian restaurants that elevate vegetables and plants through their natural characteristics rather than contorting them into some fake meat creation.

Among the new generation of such restaurants is Bubala, which operates from three sites and has two more units in the pipeline. Founder Marc Summers is not vegetarian and has not sought to create restaurants that cater for vegetarians. It’s wholly about building places with tasty food, which is no doubt why more than 75% of his customers are neither vegetarian nor vegan. “If they’ve had a meal with us and not realised there was no meat then it’s worked – customers are not going for a vegetarian meal, they are going for a nice meal,” he suggests.

Many of the chefs working across the Bubala sites are also meat eaters, with some having initially having reservations about cooking purely with vegetables, but they soon came to recognise it involves a high degree of creativity. This has proven attractive to many chefs who enjoy the complexity that often comes with this cuisine. Although it is prep-heavy, Summers says many dishes can be produced at scale and a major upside is the much better gross profit than can be achieved with non-meat dishes.

This approach has long been recognised by pioneering plant-based restaurant Terre a Terre in Brighton, which has been ploughing the furrow for vegetables since 1993 and represents something of an inspiration to newcomers like Summers. Another long-established presence in the field is Mildreds Restaurant Group – which operates the Mildreds and Mallow brands and which does currently have some meat-aping dishes on its menus – but the company has recognised a change in the market.

Sam Anstey, managing director of Mildreds Restaurant Group, says: “The plant-based category has become more sophisticated. Consumer preferences are shifting away from processed alternatives and towards healthy, plant-forward nutritious options.”

If there is any doubt about the appetite for vegetable-based cuisine, then consider Plates in London’s Old Street, which last year became the first plant-based restaurant in the UK to earn a Michelin Star. The place’s ethos is based on giving vegetables the respect they deserve. And if you think that’s a load of old waffle then give the food a try. If you can get in the place that is – as it’s always solidly booked up for months in advance.

Glynn Davis, editor, Retail Insider

This piece was originally published on Propel Info where Glynn Davis writes a regular Friday opinion piece. Retail Insider would like to thank Propel for allowing the reproduction of this column.