I spent a number of unspectacular years eating out in London growing up as a vegetarian, back when a dry mushroom risotto or limp goats cheese salad was all that most menus (bar a decent south-Indian restaurant) would deign to offer anyone of the plant-based persuasion.
The tide started turning a decade ago, with a wave of vegan fast food joints serving splashy, cartoonish takes on mock meat, from Temple of Seitan, to What The Pitta and Club Mexicana. It’s only recently that vegetarian and vegan cookery has been released from its neon chick’n cage and elevated to fine-dining standards. Which makes the fact that Plates – which only opened last summer – has won a Michelin star, gargantuan news.
The truffle comes on like a Quality Street touched by ancient witchcraft, a tart yet earthy nugget of medieval terroir
But despite being the first vegan restaurant in the UK to be blessed with such lofty status, nobody at Plates will admit that Plates is a vegan restaurant. Flesh, fish and dairy are banned, but so is the V-word, in – we assume – an attempt to dissociate itself from granola-crunching, lentil-loving hippy cliches. Like Kraftwerk never calling themselves a techno band, it works. There’s a waiting list many months-long to score a spot in this cosy, cottagecore-adjacent Old Street space.
Mild-mannered head chef Kirk Haworth busies himself in the small open kitchen while staff in muted, utilitarian uniforms looking like Monty Don at a Cotswolds garden party float about the room delivering perfectly arranged bowls of visionary veg.
From the first dish – a luminous, Kermit-green wild garlic soup dotted with potato dumplings, served with a sour apple and buckwheat truffle on the side – this is a menu which plays it safe while simultaneously playfully slapping you with coltish experimentation. The soup is fresh and invigorating, but the truffle comes on like a Quality Street touched by ancient witchcraft, a tart yet earthy nugget of medieval terroir.
The entire eight-course tasting menu takes this old-world/new-ideas philosophy and runs with it. There are slow cooked leeks piled high with chestnut cream, then splattered with potent jalapeno and gooseberry dressing and crowned with an animated frozen verjus which creates a moody, Tolkienesque mist above the bowl.
There is A Lot Going On in every dish. Barbequed maitake mushrooms with honking black bean mole, kimchi, aioli and moody little curls of blackened, puffed rice is smokier than your average Texan grillhouse. Black truffle and artichoke risotto is so much more than rice – juicy blood orange wedges give it a candied kick, while toasted hazelnut chunks and crisp artichoke wafers prove that texture remains a vegan’s best friend. A sublime 10-tog duvet of mung and urad bean lasagna with a miso and chive sauce is perhaps the evening’s deepest dive into umami waters, offering a heft of flavour belies its delicate plating.
Of the two desserts, the mint ice cream with chewy beetroot and a sweet pea kombu is our personal winner, less sweet than the giant raw cacao gateau with sour cherry and coconut blossom ice cream that follows it.
There’s much to love about Plates (not least that it offers one of the cheapest Michelin star tasting menus in town), but anywhere that makes vegetables this dazzling is a long-awaited addition to London’s vegan landscape.
The vibe An intimate, rustic-styled space in Shoreditch.
The food A plant-based tasting menu full of inspirational veg. There’s also a gluten-free option.
The drink There’s a long list of vegan, low-intervention wines (and a pairing), but don’t miss their cocktails, with tweaked classics and new inventions such as the vodka-spiked ‘Quince and White Tea’.
Time Out tip Scoring a table here is hard, but subscribe to the Plates newsletter via their website and you’ll receive regular availability updates.