Where to Find Vegetarian and Vegan Food in Glasgow

Glasgow was voted the Most Vegan-Friendly City in the UK by PETA in 2013 and The World’s Friendliest City in a Rough Guides poll in 2015. With two pretty awesome titles to its name, Glasgow was a city I’d been wanting to check out for a long time.

After the very beautiful but very touristy Edinburgh, Glasgow made a nice change. With a huge art and music scene, it was my kind of city. Although we didn’t make it to any veggie restaurants here, we had a great time trying out many of the bars and pubs throughout the city. In fact, my Glasgow re-cap consists entirely of watering holes… Oops!

On our first evening we ventured to vegan restaurant, bar and music venue Stereo with hopes of sampling their tapas-style veggie offerings. Sadly, by the time we arrived (after 9pm) their kitchen had closed. We settled for a couple of G&Ts in the chilled out venue before moving on.

After a frenzied phone search for late-night eateries, we ended up at bar and live music venue The Howlin’ Wolf where – perfect for night owls – food is served until 2am. Their Southern-American influenced menu is heavily meat-based however, they also offer a surprisingly good range of vegetarian options; we loaded up our table with a pile of veggie junk food – garlic bread, chips, spicy onion rings and nachos. Totally worth the calorie count! At three “bites” for just £9.95, it was pretty easy on the purse strings too.

The following day we fared a little better in finding food. After getting caught in the rain in the beautiful Kelvingrove Park, we needed a hot lunch and a drink or two to warm us up. We came across chic-looking bar Distill and decided to check it out.

Again, we were sold by the veggie-friendly signage out the front…

Although there were several tempting veggie options on the menu, we both ended up going for the flatbread and soup deal. We were pretty pleased with our choice when the server brought out the most epic falafel flatbread I’ve ever seen…

So big it came with a skewer to hold everything together, the freshly made falafel was served in a giant warm flatbread filled with harissa and Turkish salad for a delicious hit of spice and flavours. My phone photos of the dish are rubbish and honestly do the meal no justice!

At just £7 for the Mug O’ Soup & Sandwich deal, it was a steal! We devoured our meals with craft beers and ciders and practically had to roll out when we were done…

Gin71

I’ve always thought drinking cocktails from tea sets was a little bit “pretentious hipster”. But I’ll admit… I’ve always wanted to do it anyway. So on night two, we headed to bar Gin71 with its boozy teapots and mix-your-own cocktails.

As the name suggests, cocktail bar Gin71 specialises exclusively in the botanical spirit, offering 71 different varieties.

The cocktail menu is extensive and – perfect for indecisive people like me – they also offer “gin flights” which come with three different gins and a mixer, which you mix yourself at the table. I went for the Gin Fizz flight which came with a mini bottle of Prosecco and a pot of berries for fruity and delicious cocktails.

I’m not 100% convinced that Glasgow beats out London for most veggie-friendly city in the UK but head there and you will find a young, vibrant city heaving with great pubs, independent cafes, and probably even a brilliant restaurant or two if you manage to drag yourself away from the awesome bar scene…

Cheers!

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