Vegetarian Restaurants in San Francisco

From LoveToKnow SanFrancisco

The many vegetarian restaurants in San Francisco represent some of the best such restaurants in the country, if not the world. Non-meat eaters have always considered San Francisco a Mecca of sorts for vegetarian eating—after all, Alice Waters and her Chez Panisse restaurant in nearby Berkeley revolutionized the way locally produced vegetables are used in and as main dishes. Below is our guide to some of the best places in town to chow down on a vegetarian meal.

San Francisco offers many Vegetarian Options

Ananda Fuara

1298 Market Street (at Larkin Street) (415) 621-1994 Official Website: Ananda Fuara

The San Francisco Chronicle once famously declared that “the road to enlightened eating goes through Ananda Fuara,” and glancing inside this unassuming, perpetually busy vegetarian restaurant, it’s easy to see why. Expect to see tables littered with mouth-watering specialties like the roasted vegetable ravioli and “neatloaf” with mashed potatoes and gravy, not to mention desserts like vegan cookies, brownies, and scones. This unique place—which is run by the Bay Area chapter of the Sri Chimnoy religious sect—has a friendly and helpful staff, all of whom are decked out in saris that make them look, strangely enough, like monks. Ananda Fuara also serves breakfast; one of the few vegetarian spots in the city to do so.

Vegetarian Restaurants in San Francisco: Café Gratitude

2400 Harrison Street (at 20th Street) (415) 824-4652 Official Website: Café Gratitude

This off-the-beaten-path raw vegan restaurant has food so good that it’s guaranteed to satisfy even the most die-hard carnivores. All dishes come with the prefix “I Am,” so when you order the “I Am Sensational,” you get a pesto pizza with a sprouted buckwheat and sunflower seed crust, or there’s the “I Am Giving” dish, which is an Asian butternut squash noodle salad. There’s an amazing selection of veggie and/or organic smoothies, juices, elixirs, beers, and teas available too for washing down your breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner entrée. Unique to Café Gratitude is their original board game Abundant River, which is available to play at every table.

Golden Era Restaurant

572 O’Farrell Street (at Leavenworth Street) (415) 673-3136 Official Website: Golden Era

Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant is very popular with the tattooed and pierced bohemian crowd, not to mention non meat-eating international tourists staying at one of the many downtown hotels nearby. Prices on entrees, noodle and rice dishes, and clay pot and sizzling specialties are ridiculously, ridiculously cheap—nothing is over $10! Amazing appetizers and soups too—definitely order up some of the non-fried spring rolls while you await your main course. Golden Era consistently wins yearly awards from local newspapers and magazines for best veggie eats in the city, and it has a dining room with tables of various sizes that can accommodate both deuces and banquet-size parties. Take note that the restaurant is closed on Tuesdays.

Vegetarian Restaurants in San Francisco: Greens Restaurant

204 Bay Street Fort Mason, Building A (415) 771-6222

Tony vegetarian restaurant offers spectacular views of the San Francisco Bay to its diners, as well as a menu featuring only the freshest herbs and produce from local growers and organic farms. Greens is one of the best-known vegetarian restaurants in America—it has been open since 1979, and enjoyed immediate success right from the beginning, for it filled a gaping veggie void in the San Francisco dining scene. Reservations are a must, as are non-casual duds. If you go with a group of friends or your family, make sure someone orders the yellow squash risotto, one of the many dishes at Greens that loyal customers swear by.

Herbivore

983 Valencia Street (at 21st Street) (415) 826-5657 Official Website: Herbivore

Enormously popular vegan chain restaurant (there is another location in the city at 531 Divisadero) is populated with Mission District hipsters morning, noon, and night. The space is cozy, modern, and intimately lit, and there is limited outdoor seating in front (wonderful on lazy late Saturday afternoons, when the sunlight is beaming down on the side of the street Herbivore is located on). The lunch and dinner menu is expansive, and includes a wide variety of wraps, sandwiches, noodle dishes, soups, and salads. Entrées include gnocchi, shish kebab, lentil loaf (a favorite), and moussaka, and nothing is over $10. I have found the service at Herbivore to be spotty, but everyone I else I know who’s been there has never had a bad experience in the wait staff department.

Millennium

580 Geary Street (at Jones Street) (415) 345-3900 Official Website: Millennium

Millennium is not only one of the most popular vegetarian restaurants in San Francisco for non-meat eaters, it’s also massively popular with those who live and die by meat. The high-priced (but not too high-priced—average entrée prices hover at $20) eatery has been included in San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer’s yearly list of the 100 best restaurants in the city seemingly forever. Set your tongue to drool over such entrées as pecan crusted portabello mushroom, black sesame seed noodle pho, and blue hubbard squash risotto, and always be sure to make reservations way ahead of time if any of the above dishes sound like something you want to grub on. Millennium also has an impressive wine list and dessert menu, as well as reputation for long amounts of time elapsing between courses. Do know that all dishes are worth the wait, though.