Vegetarian Seafood in Boca Raton: Meat-Free Dishes at the City's Seafood Restaurants
With Artichoke & Vine and its crabless crab cakes now closed, vegetarian seafood in Boca Raton really means a seafood restaurant that cooks something good without fish. Chili Crab on North Dixie Highway does it best: a whole Vegetable section with a meat-free Ma Po Tofu at $15, and the only menu here where a vegetarian orders from the same part of the menu as everyone else.
At the rest, the Menu Section column tells you what dinner will look like. Chops Lobster Bar, Eddie V's Prime Seafood, City Fish Market and Ke'e Grill have no vegetarian entree at all, so the plate is a salad plus sides. The sushi bars sit in the middle: SUSHIGO, Lemongrass Asian Bistro Sushi and Yakitori Sake House each have a proper vegetarian roll or rice dish, though it is a roll or a lunch plate rather than a main.
Our picks
- Best for a real vegetarian main: Chili Crab. A full Vegetable section led by a $15 meat-free Ma Po Tofu, plus a vegetarian Shanghai noodle and hot and sour soup, all as sharing plates.
- Highest-rated kitchen: SUSHIGO. Rated 4.7, with a $19.99 roll of kale, radish, avocado, carrot and cucumber wrapped in soybean paper instead of rice.
- Best sides at a fine-dining table: Eddie V's Prime Seafood. Truffled macaroni and cheese at $17, grilled asparagus and sauteed sweet corn, in a 4.5-rated room with live jazz most nights.
- Most relaxed room for a mixed table: Luff's Fish House. A $$ room with three salads that stand on their own, including the $16 knife-and-fork Greek salad.
- Cheapest meat-free plate: Bonefish Grill. Grilled asparagus for $6.50 from a premium sides list where the asparagus, roasted new potatoes and truffle fries all cost the same.
At a glance
| Option | Dish Price | Address | Vegetarian Dish | Menu Section | Cuisine | Price Range | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $11source | 7940 Glades Rd, Boca Raton, FL 33434source | Baby Mesclun Lettuces saladsource | Saladssource | Seafoodsource | $$$source | 3.8source | |
| $17source | 101 Plaza Real S, Boca Raton, FL 33432source | Chops Chopped Saladsource | Saladssource | Steakhousesource | $$$$source | 4.2source | |
| $17source | 201 W Plaza Real #1203, Boca Raton, FL 33432source | Truffled Macaroni and Cheesesource | Sidessource | Seafoodsource | $$$$source | 4.5source | |
| $16source | 390 E Palmetto Park Rd, Boca Raton, FL 33432source | Fork & Knife Greek Saladsource | Saladssource | Seafoodsource | $$source | 4.3source | |
| $13.95source | 17940 N Military Trl #700, Boca Raton, FL 33496source | Vine Ripe Tomatoes & Sweet Onion Saladsource | Saladssource | Seafoodsource | $$source | 4.3source | |
| $15source | 1198 N Dixie HWY, Boca Raton, FL 33432source | Vegetarian Ma Po Tofusource | Vegetable dishessource | Chinesesource | $$source | 3.9source | |
| $14source | 101 Plaza Real S, Boca Raton, FL 33432source | Veggie Veggie Rollsource | Sushi rollssource | Asian fusionsource | $$source | 4.1source | |
| $19.99source | 477 North Federal Highway, Boca Raton, FL 33432source | Protein Vege Roll (No Rice)source | Sushi rollssource | Sushisource | $$$source | 4.7source | |
| $12.95source | 271 SE Mizner Blvd, Boca Raton, FL 33432source | Hibachi Fried Rice With Vegetablessource | Lunch menusource | Sushisource | $$source | 4source | |
| $6.5source | 9598 Glades Rd, Boca Raton, FL 33434source | Grilled Asparagussource | Sidessource | Seafoodsource | $$source | 4.1source |
Steak and seafood houses with no vegetarian entree
The four steak-and-seafood rooms all ask a vegetarian to assemble dinner. Chops Lobster Bar offers a $17 chopped salad of hearts of palm and chickpeas plus sharing sides like broccolini and steamed jumbo asparagus. Eddie V's has the strongest side list of the group. City Fish Market has an $11 mesclun salad and a short list of steamed and sauteed vegetables, with the lowest rating here at 3.8. At Ke'e Grill the $13.95 tomato and sweet onion salad comes with blue cheese, and entrees come with two sides, so Spinach Maria and the Provencale Pasta are the ones to build around.
Three of those four sit at $$$ or $$$$ for a full meal, so a vegetarian pays fine-dining prices for sides. Ke'e Grill is the exception at $$, but it is also one of the harder tables to get on short notice.
Vegetarian sushi: rolls, small plates and lunch
SUSHIGO backs its rice-free vegetable roll with fried silken tofu, edamame and inari nigiri, but the room is small and priced at $$$. Lemongrass Asian Bistro Sushi in Mizner Park is cheaper at $$, with a $14 Veggie Veggie Roll and a side-vegetable list (garlic broccolini, bok choy, spicy eggplant) long enough to eat as small plates, plus a tofu Buddha Delight at lunch.
Yakitori Sake House is the one to ask about ahead. Its $12.95 hibachi fried rice with vegetables comes from the lunch menu, the 3pm to 6pm happy hour adds a veggie roll and vegetable gyoza, and the dinner menu is not published in readable form, so ask about evening vegetarian dishes when you book.
Why a $6.50 side and a $19.99 roll are not comparable
Dish Price is the cost of one named plate, and the plates are different sizes. Bonefish Grill's $6.50 buys a side of asparagus, while SUSHIGO's $19.99 buys a full roll. For what an evening will cost, use Price Range instead: six of the ten are $$, and only Chops and Eddie V's reach $$$$.
The options in detail
City Fish Market
A big, polished seafood house on Glades Road in west Boca, built around a fresh-catch counter where you choose the fish and how it is cooked, with lake views from the enclosed sun porches. The kitchen is built around fish, so a vegetarian is working from the salads and the a la carte side list: steamed broccoli, sauteed baby leaf spinach, a vegetable medley and a basil potato. Reviewers are warmer about the room and the happy hour than about the value, and its aggregate score is the lowest of the ten restaurants here. Worth it for the setting and the company rather than for the plant-based cooking.
Chops Lobster Bar
The dressiest room on this list: a Mizner Park steakhouse and lobster bar with a live-lobster tank, dry-aged beef and A5 wagyu, and prices to match. There is no vegetarian main course anywhere on the dinner menu, so the meat-free meal here is the Chops Chopped Salad of hearts of palm and chickpeas plus the sharing sides, which are genuinely good: broccolini with garlic and chilli, steamed jumbo asparagus, lightly creamed baby leaf spinach, truffle parmesan fries. Best understood as somewhere you go with a group and assemble a plate, not somewhere the kitchen has cooked for you.
Eddie V's Prime Seafood
Fine dining in Mizner Park with live jazz in the lounge most nights, and the highest-rated of the expensive rooms here. Like the other prime-seafood houses it has no vegetarian entree, but its Accompaniments list is the strongest of the group: truffled macaroni and cheese made with French black truffles, grilled asparagus with lemon and sea salt, au gratin cheddar potatoes, sauteed sweet corn. Order two or three of those with a Caesar and you have a real dinner. It takes reservations and the dining room runs late, which makes it the easiest of the fine-dining options for a mixed table.
Luff's Fish House
A 1920s bungalow on East Palmetto Park Road done up like Key West, with covered gazebos outside and a fish market attached. The mains are fish, ribs or steak, but the salads section stands on its own: a knife-and-fork Greek salad, a Backyard Salad of mixed greens and avocado, and a Southwest Salad with black beans, corn, avocado and queso fresco. Cheerful and mid-priced, the least formal sit-down room on this list, and the one where a vegetarian and a fish eater can both order comfortably without booking weeks ahead.
Ke'e Grill
A dark, clubby steak-and-seafood grill up on Military Trail that Boca has been going to for more than two decades, and one of the harder tables to get on short notice. The meat-free options are the salads, including a vine-ripe tomato and sweet onion salad with crumbled blue cheese, and the side dishes that come two to an entree: Spinach Maria, Provencale Pasta and basmati rice. Nothing on the entree list is vegetarian, so expect to build a plate from those sides. Reviewers rate the food and the service well above the room.
Chili Crab
The best vegetarian showing on this list, and the one place here where a vegetarian orders from the same part of the menu as everyone else. It is a Singaporean and Hong Kong seafood kitchen on North Dixie Highway whose signature is a whole chilli crab shown to the table alive before it is cooked, but the menu carries a full Vegetable section: a meat-free Ma Po Tofu, braised tofu with vegetables, bok choy with garlic, snow pea shoots, gai lan in ginger sauce, plus a Vegetarian Shanghai Noodle and a vegetarian hot and sour soup. Everything comes as sharing plates, which is what makes a mixed table work here. Its aggregate rating is modest for the list; the vegetarian range is not.
Lemongrass Asian Bistro Sushi
A busy pan-Asian room in Mizner Park with a full sushi bar, Thai curries and dim sum alongside the raw fish. Its Side Veggies list reads like a small-plates menu in its own right, with charred garlic broccolini, wok-charred bok choy, yuzu ponzu asparagus and spicy eggplant, and the sushi bar turns out a Veggie Veggie Roll, a kappa and an avocado roll. At lunch there is a Buddha Delight of steamed tofu, bok choy, snow peas and shiitake. The dinner entree list is meat and fish only, so a vegetarian eats small plates and rolls here rather than a single main.
SUSHIGO
The highest-rated restaurant on this list, a small Federal Highway sushi bar where the chef has been making sushi for over twenty years and the fish list runs to bluefin toro, uni and Japanese madai. The vegetarian standout is the Protein Vege Roll, which wraps kale, radish, avocado, carrot and cucumber in soybean paper with a creamy yuba sauce and no rice at all. Around it sit crunchy fried silken tofu, edamame, Japanese pickled radish, and inari, avocado and kampyo nigiri. Prices are high for a strip-mall sushi bar, and the room is small enough that booking is sensible.
Yakitori Sake House
A Japanese izakaya in Royal Palm Plaza, a few minutes' walk from Mizner Park, built around robata skewers, sushi and a deep sake list, with an outdoor seating area and a daily 3pm to 6pm happy hour. Its clearest full vegetarian plate is the hibachi fried rice with vegetables on the Asian lunch menu; at happy hour there is a veggie roll, crispy baby bok choy, edamame and a vegetable gyoza. Diners describe the kitchen as accommodating for vegetarian requests. The full dinner menu is not published as readable text online, so it is worth asking about evening vegetarian dishes when you book.
Bonefish Grill
The chain option, out on Glades Road in west Boca, and the one on this list you can usually walk into. It is reliable rather than exciting, and a vegetarian is choosing from the Premium Sides list, where grilled asparagus, roasted new potatoes and truffle fries all cost the same, plus the house and Caesar salads from the Soups and Greens section. Those sides are the cheapest meat-free plates in this comparison by a wide margin, which is the main reason to consider it. Its published prices are the online-ordering ones, so expect the dining-room bill to differ a little.
How we researched this
We first looked for plant-based mock seafood and found nothing left to compare: Artichoke & Vine is closed, and PLANTA, which serves plant-based sushi, has no Boca Raton location. So this table lists seafood restaurants inside the city and one clearly meat-free dish from each current menu, chosen because the printed description leaves no doubt. None of these menus says whether fryers or stocks are shared, so a strict vegetarian should ask. Ratings all come from Restaurantji, so they compare like with like but run lower than Google's for some rows. Bonefish Grill's figures are its online-ordering prices for the Boca store, and the dining room may differ slightly.
Nine candidates that still read as open in online listicles are closed, among them Copperfish Kitchen, Ouzo Bay and the Boca Raton Truluck's. The Boca Lobster Roll Co was left off because its only meat-free item is an egg-and-cheese bagel, and Corvina Seafood Grill and Embarcadero 41 because their menus would not load for us to read. Restaurants just over the line in Deerfield Beach and Delray Beach are out, and so are True Food Kitchen and Farmer's Table, which have deeper vegetarian menus but are not seafood restaurants. Menus change; check the dish is still offered before you go.