A list of restaurants in Kyoto with vegetarian / vegan options on the menu, for vegetarians and vegans travelling together with meat eaters.
Just like my Tokyo restaurant list, it focusses on Japanese styles of food, not just brown rice and salads!
Teppan Tavern Tenamonya
🥢 Teppanyaki
A real treat! A really cosy, friendly teppanyaki restaurant run by a couple. It’s very foreigner-friendly, with English menus. A fantastic experience, and a rare place that serves wagyu beef and vegetarian options. It’s a very small restaurant with only a few tables, so reservations are mandatory. You can reserve on their website a week in advance (or 2 weeks if you’ve been before). I’d recommend marking the date on your calendar and booking as soon as reservations open.
Mimikou
🥢 Curry udon, ramen & curry rice
Vegetarian curry udon’s a rare find! Udon are thick noodles, in broth made of Japanese curry sauce (like the sauce with katsu curry). It’s more tasty than hot spicy, and really warms you up! Usually the broth contains fish or meat stock, but at Mimikou it’s made with seaweed broth instead. There are several choices on a separate vegetarian menu, as well as curry rice and vegetarian ramen. The menu says no animal products are used, so it may also be vegan (sometimes Japanese curry contains honey so I’m not 100% sure about that!).
It’s a few years old now, but you can see what Mimikou’s like in this video.
Chau Chau Gyoza
🥢 Gyoza
📍 Kawaramachi (downtown Kyoto) – walking distance from Gion
A small gyoza bar, with a wide choice of different flavours of gyoza, several of which are vegetarian/vegan – including gyoza made with yuba (tofu skin, a Kyoto speciality) as the wrapper. Delicious! It gets very busy in the evening, with a long queue, so I’d recommend going for lunch as soon as they open, or very early for dinner. There’s a lunch set that includes two types of gyoza, a side dish and a drink. There’s also a wide selection of alcoholic drinks.
Note that there are several branches of Chao Chao Gyoza, but only the Shijo Kawaramachi branch has meat-free options.
Kyoto Engine Ramen
🥢 Ramen
📍 Downtown Kyoto / Kawaramachi (near Pontocho)
A modern ramen restaurant with tables and seats along the bar, at an open kitchen. There are two varieties of vegan ramen, clearly marked on the menu, that you can customise with different toppings. They’re made with creamy soy milk broth.
Gluten free noodles are also available.
Renkon-Ya
🥢 Izakaya (small plates)
📍 Pontocho
An izakaya (Japanese bar, that also serves food) in a cosy historic house in Pontocho, the nightlife district, with only 15 seats. Vegan and vegetarian items are marked on the menu. In typical izakaya style, there are small plates including renkon (lotus root) stuffed with miso and mustard, yuba (soy milk skin), tofu, rice, onigiri, aubergine/eggplant, grilled shitake mushrooms, miso cucumber and kinpira (root vegetables).
Omen
🥢 Udon, noodles & tempura
Two branches:
📍 Ginkakuji, near the silver temple and Philosopher’s Path
📍 Shijo Pontocho (larger selection of veggie options)
Japanese style set meals with several dishes on a tray.
The Ginkakuji branch is the main store, in an old building with vegetarian soup noodles (available hot or cold) and vegetarian miso udon.
The Pontocho branch is smaller but has more vegetarian dishes: soup noodles (hot or cold), wholewheat noodles and tempura udon.
Dishes are marked as vegetarian on the menu, but seem to be vegan. The broth is made with mushrooms.
Menbaka Fire Ramen
🥢 Ramen
This is the place where they set the ramen on fire in front of you on the counter, with huge flames, that’s in the viral videos! Surprisingly, there are vegan options – or maybe it’s not all that surprising for somewhere that caters mainly to foreign tourists.
Veggie options include various ramen sets, gyoza, soy meat karaage (fried chick’n) and fried rice. There are also gluten free and pork-free options on the menu.
It’s pricey – probably because it’s well-known. The sets are large, but mostly you’re paying for the dramatic experience.
Famous places like this always get booked up; you can make a reservation on their website.
Chains All Around Japan
These chain restaurants have branches all around Japan, so they’re not just in Kyoto, but they’re always a good back-up if you can’t find anywhere to eat!
Conveyor Belt Sushi
🥢 Sushi
📍 Various
Most conveyor belt sushi chains will have a couple of veggie options – enough for a meal, but don’t expect a huge choice. Chains like Kura Sushi and Sushiro are my go-to places, but any conveyor belt sushi restaurant will be cheap and will probably have something. There’s usually kappamaki (cucumber), pickled gourd, oshinko (pickled daikon radish), natto (fermented soybeans), inari sweet tofu pockets and tamago (egg – which may possibly be made with dashi, but doesn’t taste of fish at all). It’s cheap, easy and fun! And, while people who live in Japan will tell you the quality’s better elsewhere, the sushi’s excellent compared to abroad.
See what it’s like at Kura Sushi in this video (filmed in Tokyo, but the menu and set-up inside is similar at all branches).
Coco Curry
🥢 Japanese curry
📍 Various
A must-visit for me every time I’m in Japan – it’s so good! A satisfying meal of Japanese curry and rice, that you can customise with whatever toppings you like, including various vegetables, cheese, egg, garlic bits or spicy garlic. Any of the dishes can be made with vegetarian curry sauce. Choose your spice level – if you’re not into spicy food, go for 1 or choose a mildness level. I can eat quite spicy food and have only made it to level 4 (and it goes up to 20!). Technically this is a fast food place in Japan so it’s not fancy, but it’s delicious, and perfect for a satisfying meal to fuel you up for a day of sightseeing.
The curry sauce doesn’t contain dairy or eggs, but I couldn’t verify whether it contains honey.
You can see what it’s like in this video.
Yayoi Ken
🥢 Teishoku (trays with several dishes)
📍 Various
Teishoku consists of set meals, made up of a main dish with rice and small sides on a tray. It’s more everyday than kaiseki, which is much fancier, and it’s more like Japanese home cooking. Yayoi Ken is a fairly plain chain restaurant, nothing fancy, but a good place to get a cheap, healthy lunch. There are a couple of options with soy meat, including stir fry and ginger soy meat with cabbage salad, which come with rice, cold tofu and miso soup. Note that miso soup in Japan is usually made with fish broth, so avoid that. There are also various extra side dishes you can order, including natto, extra tofu, salads and fries.
Ootoya
🥢 Teishoku (trays with several dishes)
📍 Downtown Kyoto, near Nishiki Market
Similar to Yayoi Ken (above), Ootoya is a chain serving set meals with various dishes – nothing fancy but good value. There’s one meat-free set meal: a salad bowl with chilled tofu, or you can make up a meal from the side dishes: rice, shredded cabbage, chilled tofu salad, sticky tofu (with yam, okra, natto and seweed), spinach with sesame seeds, pumpkin croquette, natto and raw egg (safe to eat in Japan – it’s usually mixed in with rice and soy sauce).
Okonomiyaki
🥢 Okonomiyaki
📍 Various
Okonomiyaki is batter (containing egg), mixed with shredded cabbage and fried into a kind of pancake, with delicious brown sauce and mayo on top. At some restaurants you cook your own at your table, and sometimes it’s cooked for you. You can choose various toppings, so, while customisation isn’t really a thing in Japan, I’ve had a a good success rate asking for it to be customised into a veggie version. And sometimes there’s even a vegetarian option on the menu! It’s usually served with bonito flakes (dried fish), but they’re easy to avoid if you’re cooking your own.
In Kyoto, I’ve been to an okonomiyaki restaurant on the restaurant floor of Yodobashi Camera by Kyoto Station several times. You cook your own at the table, or the staff can come and help you. Note that the last time I went, they oiled the grill with a huge piece of pork fat before I had a chance to stop them, so be ready in case that happens! (Crossing your arms like an ‘x’ means no, along with a polite “sumimasen, niku ga taberaremasen” = sorry, I can’t eat meat). So it can be a little hit and miss – but it’s usually ok!
My Japan Guide Book
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