Best Dairy-Free and Vegan Restaurants in Chicago
Eight of these twelve kitchens are 100% vegan, so someone strictly off dairy can order anything on the menu at Kale My Name, PLANTA Queen, Penelope's Vegan Taqueria, Soul Veg City, Urban Vegan, Amitabul, Alice & Friends' Vegan Kitchen, or Arya Bhavan. The Chicago Diner, on Halsted since 1983 and still the name people say first, is vegetarian with vegan options: a safe pick for a mixed group, but a place where you ask for the vegan version.
Past that line, the list divides by cuisine and part of town more than by price. It runs from Thai on Montrose to soul food on 75th Street, Korean in Norwood Park and Ethiopian in Uptown. Where a main dish price is printed, it falls between Arya Bhavan's $10 masala dosa and Kale My Name's $20.
Our picks
- Avoiding dairy and wheat together: Arya Bhavan. The whole Devon Avenue menu is vegan and gluten-free, so dosas and curries need no negotiation, and the masala dosa is $10.
- A table where some people eat meat: Demera Ethiopian Restaurant. A long, clearly marked vegan section sits beside the meat menu, with misir wot on injera made fresh daily and a representative main at $19.
- A birthday or date night downtown: PLANTA Queen. A sleek, fully vegan River North room whose signature is spicy 'tuna' nigiri made with dehydrated watermelon.
- Soul food at a low price: Soul Veg City. Smothered seitan steak and gravy for $15 in Chatham, with a pay-by-weight hot station for those who watch the scale.
- A plant-based burger and a drink: Kale My Name. Its Chicago Burger has been nominated for best burger in the city, and the Albany Park room turns into a full bar at night.
At a glance
| Option | Typical Entree Price | Address | Neighborhood | Cuisine | Menu Type | Signature Dish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3411 N. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60657source | Lakeviewsource | American comfortsource | Vegetarian with vegan optionssource | Radical Reubensource | ||
| 2311 W North Ave, Chicago, IL 60647source | Wicker Parksource | American comfortsource | Vegetarian with vegan optionssource | Buffalo 'Chicken' Wrapsource | ||
| $20source | 3300 W Montrose Ave, Chicago, IL 60618source | Albany Parksource | American comfortsource | 100% vegansource | Chicago Burgersource | |
| 413 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60654source | River Northsource | Pan-Asiansource | 100% vegansource | Spicy tuna nigiri made with dehydrated watermelonsource | ||
| 230 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60654source | River Northsource | Mexicansource | 100% vegansource | Beyond Meat asada tacossource | ||
| $15source | 203 E 75th St, Chicago, IL 60619source | Chathamsource | Soul foodsource | 100% vegansource | Smothered seitan steak and gravysource | |
| $16.95source | 1601 W Montrose Ave, Chicago, IL 60613source | Ravenswoodsource | Thaisource | 100% vegansource | Pad Thaisource | |
| $16.95source | 6207 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60646source | Norwood Parksource | Koreansource | 100% vegansource | Dr. K's Cure All Noodle Soupsource | |
| $16.95source | 5812 N Broadway St, Chicago, IL 60660source | Edgewatersource | Pan-Asiansource | 100% vegansource | Noble Burgersource | |
| $10source | 2508 W. Devon Avenue, Chicago, IL 60659source | Indiansource | 100% vegansource | Masala Dosasource | ||
| $19source | 4801 N. Broadway Street, Chicago, IL 60640source | Uptownsource | Ethiopiansource | Vegan menu sectionsource | Misir Wotsource | |
| $17.95source | 2109 S China Pl, Chicago, IL 60616source | Chinatownsource | Chinesesource | Vegetarian with vegan optionssource | Kung Pao Tofusource |
Fully vegan kitchens or vegetarian menus with vegan swaps
The Menu Type column is the one to filter by if dairy is a medical issue rather than a preference. Three rooms are vegetarian with vegan options. Handlebar in Wicker Park puts eggs and cheese on its breakfast side and marks the vegan versions with an asterisk. Veggie House in Chinatown is mostly vegan, but its crab rangoon is labelled with cheese and milk. The Chicago Diner can make most dishes vegan, which still means asking.
Demera Ethiopian Restaurant is the only row that serves meat at all. Its vegan section is long and traditional, but the farmer's cheese and honey appetizers sit on the same menu, so read the labels on the starters.
What a main dish costs, $10 to $20
The price column holds one representative main per kitchen, not matched dishes. Arya Bhavan's $10 dosa and Soul Veg City's $15 seitan steak sit at the low end. Urban Vegan, Amitabul and Alice & Friends' Vegan Kitchen all land at $16.95, Veggie House at $17.95, Demera at $19, and Kale My Name at $20.
Four rows have no price: The Chicago Diner, Handlebar, PLANTA Queen and Penelope's. None of them prints item prices on a page that could be read, and PLANTA Queen's write-up simply says to expect downtown prices.
Tuesday is the hard night
Three of the twelve write-ups flag a Tuesday closing. Amitabul keeps short hours and is closed Monday and Tuesday as well, which matters for a drive out to Milwaukee Avenue. Alice & Friends' Vegan Kitchen in Edgewater opens for dinner only and closes Tuesday, and Veggie House is closed Tuesday too. The Chicago Diner is down to its Lakeview room since the Logan Square location closed at the end of 2025, and it gets crowded.
The options in detail
The Chicago Diner
The elder statesman of meat-free Chicago, open on Halsted since 1983 and still the place people name first. The kitchen does diner food rather than health food: seitan Reubens, milkshakes, biscuits and gravy, country fried steak. Everything is meat-free and most of it can be made vegan, so it is a safe pick for a mixed group where only one person is avoiding dairy. The Logan Square second location closed at the end of 2025, so Lakeview is the one left, and it gets crowded.
Handlebar
A long-running Wicker Park bar and restaurant that cooks vegetarian comfort food from scratch, with a beer garden out back that is the real draw in summer. The menu is built around seitan and mushrooms: a buffalo 'chicken' wrap, a Chicago-style tofu dish, sloppy joes. Read the menu carefully if you are strictly dairy-free, because this is a vegetarian kitchen rather than a vegan one: eggs and cheese appear on the breakfast side, and the vegan versions are the ones marked with an asterisk.
Kale My Name
An all-day Albany Park room that works as a bright cafe at lunch and a full bar at night, with weekend brunch in between. The kitchen is entirely plant-based and leans into things people miss: burgers, seitan wraps, fried cauliflower wings, tacos. Its Chicago Burger has been nominated for best burger in the city, which is the shortest way to explain what the place is going for. Prices sit at the top of this list, with most mains around twenty dollars.
PLANTA Queen
The dressed-up option on this list: a sleek River North dining room from a group with outposts in Miami, Toronto and New York, built for birthdays and date nights rather than a quick weeknight dinner. The kitchen is Asian-fusion and entirely plant-based, and the tricks are the point, from spicy 'tuna' nigiri made with dehydrated watermelon to jackfruit wings that mimic crispy skin. Reviewers rate it as one of the rare upscale vegan rooms where the food holds up on its own. Expect downtown prices.
Penelope's Vegan Taqueria
A casual, fully vegan taqueria that has grown to three Chicago rooms, with the River North location on Chicago Avenue the flagship. The menu covers the range a regular taqueria would, from Beyond asada tacos and enchiladas to burritos, chilaquiles and a weekend brunch buffet. The enchiladas come stuffed with spiced potatoes under red salsa and vegan sour cream, and the kitchen is convincing enough that meat eaters tend not to notice what is missing.
Soul Veg City
The oldest fully plant-based kitchen on this list, running on 75th Street for four decades as The Original Soul Vegetarian before a renovation and rename. It is Southern and soul cooking done without animal products: smothered seitan steak and gravy, cornbread dressing, vegan mac and cheese. Much of the business is a pay-by-weight hot station and deli counter rather than table service, which makes it the cheapest sit-down option here if you are careful at the scale. Family-owned, and a South Side institution.
Urban Vegan
A Thai kitchen on Montrose where the whole menu is vegan, which means the fish sauce and egg problems that usually make Thai ordering fiddly simply do not come up. Curries, tofu satay and soy chicken with peanut sauce are the core, built on seitan and other substitutes. It started as mainly a carryout counter and is now a full sit-down room, and it remains one of the better-value neighborhood options for vegan Asian food on the North Side.
Amitabul
A small Norwood Park storefront serving what it calls spiritual vegan Korean cooking, well out of the way on Milwaukee Avenue and worth the trip. The food is oil-light and built on whole ingredients: brown rice bi bim bop, buckwheat noodle salads, mandoo dumplings, and Dr. K's Cure All Noodle Soup, which the kitchen recommends for a cold or a hangover. Portions are large and almost everything sits at the same price. It keeps short hours and is closed Monday and Tuesday, so check before driving out.
Alice & Friends' Vegan Kitchen
A small Edgewater dining room cooking across East Asia without any animal products, so the dishes that are usually off limits (Korean rice bowls with egg, teriyaki glazed with honey, creamy curries) are all available. Expect miso ramen, dol sot bi bim bab in a hot stone bowl, kung pao, dumplings and a house burger, plus a full case of vegan desserts made in-house. Many dishes can be made gluten-free, nut-free or allium-free on request. It opens for dinner only and is closed Tuesdays.
Arya Bhavan
An Indian restaurant on Devon Avenue that is entirely vegan and entirely gluten-free, which is a rare combination and makes it the easiest room on this list for someone avoiding both dairy and wheat. Ghee, paneer and yogurt are simply absent, so dosas, sambar, curries and chaat arrive as ordered without negotiation. There is also a growing raw section, plus detox programs and cooking classes on the side. Dosas start at eight dollars, the lowest entry price here.
Demera Ethiopian Restaurant
An Uptown Ethiopian restaurant that has been open since 2007 and is not a vegan restaurant, but carries a long, clearly marked vegan section beside the meat menu, which makes it the easiest pick here for a mixed table. The vegan dishes are the traditional ones: misir wot, kik alicha, gomen, all served on injera made fresh daily. Ordering the vegetable sampler gets you several of them on one platter to share. Watch the labels on the appetizers, where the farmer's cheese and honey dishes are not vegan.
Veggie House
The only vegetarian Chinese kitchen in Chinatown, and a long menu of the dishes that are normally impossible to order without meat: orange 'chicken' built from battered mushrooms, Mongolian 'beef' made from plant-based strips, Kung Pao tofu, hand-pulled noodles. Most of it is vegan, but not all: a few items use egg or dairy, and the crab rangoon is labelled with cheese and milk, so check before ordering if dairy is the issue. Casual, cheap for the portion size, and closed Tuesdays.
How we researched this
This list was built for range: each row had to add a different cuisine or a different part of the city, and American comfort food stopped at three (the Diner, Handlebar and Kale My Name). Some well-known names are missing on purpose. Kitchen 17 closed for regular service in December 2025, by its own account. Majani's restaurant is listed as closed, with only catering continuing. Bloom Plant Based Kitchen is marked permanently closed. Kitchen 17 and Bloom both still turn up in roundups. Healthy Substance, B'Gabs, Chicago Raw and Can't Believe It's Not Meat are real candidates that were not pursued once twelve rows covered the cuisines and neighborhoods.
The empty price cells are menus that print no prices on a readable page; delivery-app prices were passed over because they are marked up and would not line up with the dine-in figures. Arya Bhavan's neighborhood is empty because no page we read names it. Addresses come from each restaurant itself, and a few neighborhood and cuisine cells come from a published Chicago vegan guide. Restaurants in this category open and close often, and at the vegetarian kitchens some dishes carry egg or cheese, so look over the current menu and hours on the day you plan to eat, especially at the four rooms that are not fully vegan.