11 best vegan sweets and desserts in Tokyo

Going gluten-free and vegan has never looked so good. Posh is the latest addition to the growing ranks of coffee shops and cafés swarming around Kiyosumi-Shirakawa and it offers a raw, plant-based menu catering to those with food intolerances and the diet-conscious. 

The menu is focused on raw fruit tarts that include no additives, wheat, dairy or white sugar. Instead, the tarts are made with a mix of coconut and nuts and topped with seasonal fruit sourced from fruit sandwich specialist Daiwa Nakameguro. 

Pair your fruit tart with a fresh organic coffee or a superfood drink made with ingredients like rose powder and chaga mushrooms from Brooklyn’s Anima Mundi Apothecary. Milk-based drinks are made with your choice of oat, soy or fresh almond milk, which is made right in store.

Vegans rejoice! Although Japan’s famous fruit sandwiches might sound vegan-friendly, most use cream and sliced bread containing milk or eggs. But herbivores can tuck into these luxurious fruit sandwiches with egg- and dairy-free shokupan, filled with fruit and soy-based whipped cream.

This is Fruits and Season’s first physical store and the fruit comes from the popular Daiwa produce dealer – the same group behind the fancy fruit sandos at Daiwa Nakameguro – so you know the quality is top-notch. Come early to scoop up the seasonal flavours before they sell out. If you’d rather skip the queues, the shop also offers online delivery to selected prefectures.

Vegan pastry chef Haruo Okada started producing his vegan treats 16 years ago, hoping that children with egg or dairy allergies would have an opportunity to taste his desserts. Now he owns a takeaway shop in Hiroo stocked with desserts using plant-based ingredients that don’t contain eggs, honey, dairy or any ingredients derived from animals.

Customers can purchase a vegan version of the classic strawberry shortcake for ¥680 per slice at the shop, or make a reservation for a whole cake (¥4,300) online.

Upbeet creates vegan and gluten-free desserts that are also free of refined sugar. Its signature doughnuts come in five different flavours: plain, black sesame, organic matcha, beet, and peanut butter milk chocolate. Each doughnut is made with ingredients like chickpea and brown rice instead of white flour, and is baked instead of being deep fried in oil, giving it a satisfyingly chewy consistency.

Upbeet also offers brownies made with zucchini, as well as cheesecake made from plant-based milk and nuts to mimic the flavour of real cream cheese. Unfortunately, Upbeet doesn’t have its own shop yet, but you can buy the treats online, head to one of the stockists listed on its website, or better still, visit its stand at Aoyama Farmers Market on weekends. 

While many rice crackers tend to be vegan, Japanese rice cracker manufacturer Kameida Seika goes above and beyond with its new exclusively plant-based brand Jeriz.

There are fancy rice crackers that come in flavours like tomato, burdock and white truffle, and even a vegan rusk (from ¥972 for a pack of five). It’s a bite-sized rusk made out of rice flour that's baked and seasoned with a butter-like flavour – without the actual butter, of course. The rice language-de-chat (from ¥1,728) is also made with rice flour and soy milk, and has a rich chocolate filling made from sustainable cacao.

Jeriz is only available from the Jeriz shop in the Ginza Mitsukoshi department store.

Popular Japanese custard pudding Pucchin Pudding has finally released a non-dairy alternative using only plant-based ingredients. Instead of the usual eggs and milk, this vegan custard pudding is made of soy milk and almond paste. It has the same consistency as the original recipe, but uses natural cane sugar to tone down the sweetness.

You'll find Pucchin vegan pudding in the fridge section of your local supermarket: it's ¥200 for a pack of three, or a single larger serve for ¥140.

Daughter Boutique in Matsugaya specialises in baked goods made without any flour, dairy, eggs or other animal products. The treats here are also free of any artificial ingredients, and are sweetened with natural ingredients like beet sugar and maple syrup instead of refined white sugar.

You’ll find a selection of muffins (¥432) that come in flavours including strawberry, banana, blueberry and even spiced carrot with rum infused raisins, as well as tarts (¥972) and brownies (¥594), too.

But the main draw are the cylindrical tubes of cookies (from ¥2,862), each featuring six to ten different flavours based around a common theme. The signature cookie pack has the shop’s standard and most popular flavours including smoky nuts, raspberry, coconut, vegan cheese, pistachio and orangette chocolate sandwich.

Glico is well-known for its popular Japanese snacks like Pocky and Pretz, and now you can get a range of its plant-based snacks and drinks at the Glico Almond Days shop in Tokyo Station. The café has nine types of fully plant-based drinks including plain almond milk (from ¥390), frozen drinks (from ¥550) and hot chocolates (from ¥390).

The store also stocks Glico’s new line of almond biscuits (from ¥180) that don’t contain any egg or dairy products. Go for the plain biscuit or the almond creamwich with almond cream and rum raisin in between two biscuits.

This venue will open on December 15 2022.

Cookie Time from New Zealand has been serving its fresh-from-the-oven cookies in Harajuku since 2013 and now it's finally offering a double chocolate cookie for vegans. Using only ingredients derived from plants while maintaining the same texture as the original cookies, each of these decadent treats costs ¥340. We recommend pairing it with almond milk for the perfect all-vegan afternoon snack.

Many know the drinkable ice cream Coolish for its convenient on-the-go packaging. It comes in a variety of flavours like chocolate and vanilla as well as seasonal ones like pineapple, grape and melon soda float.

Now there’s a vegan version using soybeans and pea milk. The Coolish Green Vanilla is great for those looking for a plant-based alternative as the texture and taste is similar to the original vanilla flavour. You can find it in supermarkets nationwide for around ¥151.