Vegan restaurant becomes first in UK to receive prestigious Michelin star
The award shows how plant-based food is continuing to become increasingly popular in the fine dining industry.
One of the dishes at Plates London: a mung and urad bean lasagne in a miso and chive sauce. Credit: Safia Sarkarchi
A new restaurant in London has become the first-ever vegan establishment in the UK to be awarded a prestigious Michelin star.
Plates London opened in 2024 to rave reviews and quickly sold out bookings for months in advance.
The fine-dining restaurant offers an 8 course tasting menu that includes dishes such as barbecued maitake mushroom, a kabocha squash & ginger soup, and a caw caco gateau.
Now Plates London has made history in the UK as the first vegan eatery to receive one of the food industry’s most-coveted titles, a Michelin star.
Owner and chef Kirk Haworth accepted the award at the annual Michelin Guide Great Britain and Ireland ceremony held earlier this week.
Inspectors from the Michelin Guide said the award “feels like a momentous moment.”
“As plant-based cooking has continued to evolve and develop over the last decade, it’s about time a vegan restaurant came along that could be counted among the country’s culinary elite,” writes the Michelin Guide. “What’s important to remember, though, is that Plates is not just ‘the vegan Star’ – it is a Star full stop.”
One of the desserts at Plates London. Credit: Jodi Hinds
Reviews from the inspectors highlighted Haworth’s strong culinary technique underpinning all the dishes. Haworth’s ability to adapt sauces and flavors to be made from plant-based ingredients was singled out for praise, including an “exceptional” mushroom dish with natural flavor and buttery texture, and a “supremely well-balanced” rice pudding ice cream.
Before opening Plates last year, Hayworth spent nearly two decades working in Michelin-starred restaurants as a classically trained chef. In 2016, he was diagnosed with Lyme Disease and wanted to rethink his lifestyle, which led him to explore a plant-based diet to help improve his health.
“We came to plant-based by way of health, for people and the planet,” Haworth states on the restaurant’s website.
The rise of vegan fine dining
While Plates London may be the first vegan eatery to receive a Michelin star in the UK, several other plant-based restaurants around the world have already also received the prestigious accolade.
This includes what is perhaps one of the world’s most highly-regarded restaurants, New York’s Eleven Madison Park. Under chef and co-owner Daniel Hamm, the iconic fine-dining restaurant made headlines worldwide when it announced in 2021 that it would no longer be serving meat and dairy and would instead be switching to an entirely vegan menu.
An example dish at Eleven Madison Park: Fried Okra with Basil and Finger Lime, topped with finger lime segments, basil blooms, and marinated okra seeds. Credit: Evan Sung
Hamm’s landmark decision, which aimed to “reinvent what fine dining can be,” signalled a significant shift in the food industry and showed a new level of sophistication and prestige around what plant-based food could be.
Eleven Madison Park’s plant-based transformation also sparked a huge wave of interest in plant-based fine dining, with the restaurant quickly building a reservation waitlist of 15,000 people and then later in 2022 becoming the first fully-vegan restaurant in the world to receive three Michelin stars.
For more on plant-based dining, listen to a Species Unite podcast episode from the archive where we talk with Alexis Gauthier: the Michelin-starred French chef who went vegan. Listen here.
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