Ultimate Asheville vegan restaurant guide (2026)

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Plant offers a variety of cocktails, mocktails, wine, and beer.

I chose a glass of Malbec. My husband opted for a cocktail called Andrea’s Ride Home made with cacao-infused vodka, borghetti, kahlua, and a little salt. As a big coffee lover, he enjoyed every sip.

To start, the vegan cheeseboard is an essential.

When we visited, the cheeseboard included aged cashew cheese (the greenish wedges pictured above), walnut-rolled farmer’s cheese, almond ricotta, olives, roasted garlic, pickled fruits and vegetables, including pickled turnips.

My favorite bite was grazing the toasted black garlic bread through the creamy mound of herb-dusted vegan ricotta. (It’s reminiscent of my vegan feta recipe before baking.)

The perfectly ripe peaches and tangy cashew cheese was also way up there in terms of perfect bites.

Other starters when we visited included:

• Actually crispy potatoes (with salsa verde, shallot butter, and smoked salt)
• Lion steak tostadas
• Ravioli with almond ricotta
• Wild greens uttapam (with chana masala)

For our main course (from their biggest plates section), we shared the tofu piccata. They divided it onto two plates for us for easy sharing.

Crusted tofu was laid on a bed of creamy truffled cauliflower and potatoes along with creamed farm greens and roasted oyster mushrooms. The plate was circled with lemon-caper sauce, and finished with potato chips.

(Will I be remaking this dish at home, replacing my seitan piccata with crusted tofu and then finishing it with air fryer potato peels? A hundred percent yes.)

Other larger plates on the menu included:

• Crispy mushroom mole
• The curry
• Raw lasagna

For dessert we chose peanut butter-ganache cheesecake.

This decadent and fudgey dessert had a crisp cocoa crust. It was surrounded by raspberry jam, peanut praline, and peanut drizzle to drag through every bite.

Other dessert options while we were there:

• Chocolate chip almond blondie
• Two scoops of vegan ice cream (including an olive oil ice cream that was very tempting)

Someone recently asked on Threads, “What is your favorite vegan restaurant?”

It wasn’t long before The Smokin’ Onion was mentioned, and I can totally understand why.

This vegan restaurant offers incredible comfort food that will have you thinking about it long past your last meal.

They have a brick and mortar location on Haywood Road, as well as a food truck.

The food truck shows up at various events, and they can be found 5 minutes away from the restaurant at New Belgium Brewery on Tuesdays.

Grab your food, and then take it inside the brewery to eat with drinks.

Wow is all I can say about this town gyro. If I lived in Asheville, I’d be ordering it over and over again.

This hearty sandwich has just the right amount of tang and acid from vegan tzatziki to make the flavors of the seitan pop.

Along with shaved, marinated, and grilled seitan, soft pita is stuffed with mixed greens, cucumber, tomato, and diced onion.

It’s served with the side of your choice, like fried Brussels sprouts, which had a surprising barbecue flavor.

When a vegan chicken sandwich is on the menu, my husband can’t refuse.

The cluckin’ good sandwich is made with a buttermilk fried chick’n patty, lettuce, tomato, smoked onion jam, and "honey" mustard aioli on a toasted house bun.

It comes with your choice of side, like the crispy fries shown here.

They also have gluten-free swaps for the chick’n and bun, if you prefer.

Chinga La Migre is a delicious bowl of mouthwatering goodness. You can choose your own adventure with every forkful.

What made this bowl irresistible to me were the coconut crusted lion’s mane mushrooms, which have a breaded chicken quality. They’re served alongside fire roasted corn, mixed greens, salsa, and avocado on a bed of saucy black beans.

On the side of the bowl are cheesy mung dal eggs, which are similar to polenta fries or chickpea flour fries, but made with mung dal instead.

It’s all finished with crème fraîche, lime, cilantro, and fresh jalapeño. Use the crispy fried corn tostada to scoop everything up.

This bowl is gluten-free as-is.

If you’ve been craving the flavors of a Big Mac, order a Trashy Burger.

This Impossible burger is topped with Follow Your Heart American cheese, shredded lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle on a pillowy bun.

It’s then finished with Thousand Island (vegan Big Mac sauce) or barbecue sauce. Your call!

It can be made gluten-free by subbing a gluten-free bun, and it comes with your choice of sides.

After so many wonderfully gluttonous meals, I start craving fresh, raw veggies for balance. Pulp + Sprout to the rescue!

This vegan restaurant focuses on whole plant foods in a way that celebrates veggies, and lets their naturally delicious flavors shine.

You order at the counter, where they also have juices, vegan cheeses, and desserts on offer. Then pick a table, and your order is brought out to you.

I chose the Wellness Salad with kale, avocado, cucumber, radish, carrot, apple, and roasted pepitas, tossed in lemon dill dressing.

I loved the sweetness of the apple, and how hydrating the cucumber was on the very hot day we dined there.

The dressing reminded me of the creamy dill dressing I make at home, but with added nutritional yeast for cheesy umami.

My husband got the mushroom banh mi. The sourdough baguette was so pillowy and fresh. It was filled with seared oyster and shiitake mushrooms, cucumber, radish, spicy aioli, sesame-ginger slaw, arugula, and cilantro.

He loved every bite, mmm-ing the whole way through.

On the side was a little dollop of sweet potato salad.

Just twenty-five minutes from Asheville is Dough House, an all-vegan donut shop. Located in Black Mountain, North Carolina, they have incredible hot and fresh donuts. (Krispy who?)

There’s not a ton of seating inside, but there are a couple of tables, plus a bench in front of the bakery.

If you’re driving from Asheville, give them a call before you go, because they do sell out. Options change by the day and season.

In addition to standard gluten-rich donuts, they also have gluten-free donut holes in a variety of flavors.

The freshly fried donuts are crispy on the outside, and then just dissolve into your mouth. It’s way too easy to down one right after the other!

All of the flavors we tried were excellent, but I was especially fond of classic vanilla and raspberry vanilla.

While dairy cheese is on the menu, all of the items in the dessert case are vegan.

They’re known for their peanut butter tofu, which is available on their Family Favorite plate. (It can be ordered small or large, depending on your appetite. The small size is shown above.)

Peanut butter baked tofu is served alongside garlicky sauteed kale, smashed potatoes, and a very miso-forward gravy.

The coconut curry plate is made with garbanzo beans, spinach, peas, carrots, potatoes, and peppers in a creamy sauce over brown rice. It’s served with a side salad.

The curry was a generous portion, but the flavors were a little dusty and one note.

Rosetta’s Kitchen opened in 2002, and both the menu and the space feel a little stuck there. If I had enjoyed my food, that might have felt nostalgic. But I walked away disappointed.

The menus were sticky and stained. No one was wiping tables before we sat down, so I had to push away old food off the table. The peanut butter tofu was lukewarm (as it had been when I visited years ago). But the prices are about the same as other nicer spots in town. (Our meals were $16 and $17 respectively.)

I know this place is a favorite for many, which is why I tried again after being underwhelmed the first time I visited. I really wanted to like it more than I did.

Before I visited Asheville, I did a ton of research on where to eat. One restaurant that kept coming up again and again was Chai Pani.

They’ve scooped up a number of awards over the years, including the highly prestigious James Beard Outstanding Restaurant award in 2022.

The space is colorful, lively, and inviting. It was basically made for Instagram.

Although it’s a large space, it’s quite popular. So expect a wait. (When we were there for lunch, the wait was about 25 minutes, unless we had wanted to sit at the bar.)

The menu is focused on Indian street food, and vegan options are marked on the menu.

They are perhaps most well-known for their matchstick okra fries, which are vegan. However, neither my husband nor I are big okra lovers, so we skipped that one.

Instead, we started with disco bhel, a crunchy, sweet, spicy, and tangy snack. It’s made with poori, puffed rice, boondi, corn poha, sev, onion, cilantro, roasted peanuts, tamarind chutney, green chutney, bhel mix, and pomegranate.

Every bite was like firecrackers going off in your mouth. With eyes widened, there was a new texture, a vibrant flavor, or a bright pop of acid in each mouthful.

Next, we shared vada pav. Although it’s listed as vegetarian on the menu, it can be prepared vegan by omitting the ghee on the bun.

This street sandwich is filled with spiced potato dumplings that are covered in a curried chickpea batter and fried. Then they’re topped with mint and tamarind chutneys, and served with a couple of fried chillies.

I loved both dishes so much, I’d be thrilled to go back and try every vegan item on the menu including:

• Green mango chaat
• Spring green uttapam
• Baingan bharta
• Sabudana vada tots

In addition to their Asheville location, Chai Pani has restaurants in Decatur, Georgia and Washington, D.C.

The Gypsy Queen Cuisine is a Lebanese restaurant (with food truck) in West Asheville. They have loads of marked vegan options, including many dishes I’ve never seen veganized in my nearly 20 years of veganism.

(Vegan Lebanese poutine? What? I’ve got to circle back again someday with friends for their fries topped with vegan tofu feta cheese, vegan “not lamb” ground seitan hashweh, tarator, and parsley.)

Kofta is something I never tried before I went vegan. However, over the years, I’ve seen demonstrations on Food Network. The addition of cinnamon in a skewered meatball has sounded very curious to me and unlike anything I ate growing up.

So when I saw vegan kofta on the menu, I knew immediately that was going to be my order.

Made with Impossible meat, it’s dotted with onion, parsley, and spices. Then it’s served alongside hummus, tabbouleh, and pita to scoop up every bite.

The cinnamon didn’t overwhelm the tender Impossible meat, but married in harmony with the other spices.

My husband ordered something he also never tried in his non-vegan life. He got the vegan “not lamb” shawarma wrap.

It’s made with house made seitan that is flavored with Lebanese 7 spice. The wrap was finished with toom (vegan garlic aioli), lettuce, tomatoes, red onion, parsley, and vegan mint-cucumber sauce.

Living in Iowa, our vegan options can get a little same-y. So having something outside the ordinary was a real treat.

I visited Green Sage Café on a previous trip to Asheville. While it wasn’t a place I felt compelled to revisit this time, it’s still one of the cafés that comes up most often in vegan Asheville recommendations, so it’s worth knowing about.

Green Sage Cafe is a casual, order at the counter kind of place with vegan options. Breakfast is available all day at their three locations in Asheville.

They offer vegan dishes like scrambled tofu, biscuits and gravy, tempeh sausage, and root hash.

When I visited, the biscuits and mushroom gravy were the best parts of the meal. And I liked that they included a little vegan flag on their plates.

In the negative, the scrambled tofu tasted like turmeric and not much else, which always kind of bums me out. And the tempeh sausage was a bit on the hockey puck side.

However, with three locations and several years having passed since I was there, your experience may vary.

In a place like Asheville where so many restaurants cater to vegans, I wasn’t able to visit every one that I wanted to try.

Here are some more vegan-friendly restaurants that look promising:

• Dobra Tea: Vegetarian tea house with 3 locations in Asheville
• Jargon: Fancy modern American restaurant (I heard so many raves!)
• Nine Mile: Caribbean-inspired dishes with 3 locations
• La Rumba Latina: Southern Mexican restaurant with separate vegan menu
• Botiwalla: Sister restaurant to Chai Pani with 2 locations in Asheville (One shares a parking lot with The Smokin’ Onion)
• The Hop: Locally owned ice cream shop with lots of vegan options

Sierra Nevada Brewery is something of a destination, if the Disneyland-style parking is any indication.

According to Sierra Nevada’s Barnivore listing, all of the beers there are vegan except for Narwhale, which contains honey.

As for food, their menu changes, and vegan options are labeled. On their website, current options include marinated olives, green beans, wood-fired veggies, pizza with vegan mozzarella, and Thai green curry with tofu.

New Belgium Brewing has regular visits from vegan food truck, The Smokin’ Onion (listed above).

Grab a cold, fizzy glass of Mountain Time, and bring in your seitan gyros for a top notch Tuesday night.

According to the New Belgium Brewery Barnivore listing, all of their beer is vegan, except for Honey Orange Trippel, Bier de Queer, and Tenth Nail, which contain honey.

All of the beer at White Labs Brewing Co. is vegan, according to their Barnivore listing.

They also have a number of food options, including a vegan Caesar salad, vegan double smash burger, and wood-fired pizza.

We ordered one of their pizzas to go, and ate it with a bottle of La Sonriente from Trader Joe’s back at our vacation rental.

For easy ordering, we got their sausage pizza, which is topped with Alta Cucina pizza sauce, fire roasted onions, and fire roasted red peppers. Then we omitted the non-vegan ingredients, and chose vegan cheese and house vegan Italian sausage instead (which both came with an upcharge).

Their housemade vegan sausage had a nice bit of spice to it, which elevated the pie.

There are 3 locations of Wicked Weed, but the brew pub is the location with food. To see which beers are vegan here, check out Wicked Weed’s Barnivore listing.

They have a Beyond Burger on the menu, as well as a few options that look potentially vegan-izable if dairy ingredients are removed.

Otherwise, grab some boiled peanuts and french fries, and snack until you’re ready to go elsewhere for more substantive vegan options.

Need a break from beer? Try Ben’s Tune-Up. This sake joint has unique flavors that are all vegan and gluten-free.

Plus, they have a vegan vegetable fried rice bowl on the menu. (They appeared to have more vegan rice bowl options on their website, but they were taped over on the menu when we visited.)

Other brewery options to try:

• Diatribe Brewing: All of the beer, wine, ciders, and snacks sold at Diatribe are vegan, including a large hot pretzel with mustard, and smoked pimento dip from Darë Vegan Cheese. While not all of the food trucks that visit are vegan, they have occasional pop-ups from Mean Mandy’s, a vegan food truck that looks incredible.
• Asheville Pizza & Brewing: Watch a movie while you eat a pizza. In addition to vegetable toppings, vegan options include tofu, curried tofu, veggie pepperoni, veggie chorizo, and vegan cheese.

I know many people hate grocery shopping, but honestly, it’s one of my favorite things to do on vacation. I love seeing what vegan products are available in other cities.

Plus, getting groceries and eating breakfasts and/or cocktails at home is a good way to save money and break up some of those pricey and indulgent restaurant meals.

This small, but well appointed farmers market has everything I could want for my casual Saturday shopping.

If your visit to Asheville falls over a weekend, it’s worthy of a stop with vegan cheeses from Darë Vegan Cheese and White Squirrel Kitchens, local pottery, fruit jams, iced coffee with non-dairy milk, and warm wraps.

If you fall in love with Darë’s cheeses (like I have), you can use code CADRYSKITCHEN for 10% off your first online order.

I couldn’t resist buying a bowl from potter Dawn Robertson of Petrichor Pottery. (Maybe you’ll see it here on my blog in a future recipe post.)

While my husband made a beeline, as usual, for local jam. (Glad both purchases made it through our travels home unscathed!)

For breakfast, we split this mouthwatering Saj wrap from Habibi Village stuffed with Darë vegan pepperjack, hummus, zaatar, olives, and greens.

It was so briny, tangy, and flavorful. I could have turned around and ordered another one right then and there.

French Broad Food Co-op is across the street from Wicked Weed Brew Pub. They have organic produce, baked items, bulk goods, and more.

While they’re small in size, they have a surprisingly large selection of vegan cheeses and plant meats from both local and mainstream brands.

(This would be a great place to get everything you need for a vegan charcuterie board.)

West Village Market & Deli is a bodega-sized market with produce, prepared items, and standalone vegan refrigerated cases.

For a small neighborhood store, they have a good selection of vegan items -including non-dairy cheeses from Rebel, Violife, Treeline, Nuts for Cheese, and Darë.

More akin to a Whole Foods, Earth Fare is a larger natural grocery store with a wide variety of vegan products scattered throughout the store.

You can also find produce, grab and go items, bulk goods, dried and packaged foods, and supplements.

Trader Joe’s always has really good prices and unique products that are exclusive to them.

So whether you need to pick up high protein tofu for breakfast or a bottle of wine to watch the sun go down over the Blue Ridge Mountains, this is a good place to go.

They’re also right next door to Whole Foods, so you can hit them both in one stop.

For more TJ’s grocery ideas, check out my favorite vegan products at Trader Joe’s.

All of that, and we still haven’t talked about the many things to see and do while in Asheville.

It really is a nature lover’s paradise with the Blue Ridge Mountains, waterfalls, and breathtaking views in every direction. Plus, shopping, museums, and more.

Here are just a few things to do while you’re there:

• Drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway
• Admire Looking Glass Falls in the Pisgah National Forest
• Buy artwork from a local artisan in the River Arts District
• Browse the independent shops and boutiques downtown
• Visit the quaint stores in nearby Brevard and Black Mountain

Have you visited Asheville? Let me know in the comments about your favorite vegan restaurants, bakeries, breweries, or hidden gems I should add to my list for next time!

Content updated July 11, 2026. Originally published July 11, 2016.