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A new restaurant has become the first-ever vegan eatery to be awarded a Michelin star in the UK.
Plates, located in Hoxton, east London, was awarded the accolade at a ceremony in Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday evening.
The restaurant is run by chef Kirk Haworth who, according to Michelin, impressed judges by “taking his classical training and inventively adapting it to a vegan diet.”
After winning the award, Haworth said that he’s “trying to get rid of the word ‘vegan’, really,” adding that it’s “all about flavour, excitement, and innovation.”
The rise of Plates
Haworth and his sister Keeley opened the current Plates location in 2024. The restaurant offers eight innovative dishes on the menu, including caramelized lion’s mane mushroom, barbecued maitake mushroom, and rice pudding ice cream.
Read more: British Restaurant Awards Unveils Its Top 10 Vegan-Friendly UK Eateries
Having previously worked at a number of popular non-vegan restaurants – such as Pied à Terre, The French Laundry, Quay Sydney, and The Square – Haworth adopted a plant-based diet after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2016. He saw a marked improvement in his symptoms after cutting out animal products, and he started experimenting with vegan ingredients from there. “I never really understood food the way I do now,” he told the Evening Standard in 2018. “The way I think about food now is completely different.”
Plates has proved so popular that it’s fully booked for the foreseeable future. You can, however, sign up to the newsletter to be alerted to cancellations. The restaurant confirmed to Plant Based News that it will be releasing more bookings for May through July very soon.
If you missed out on a Plates booking, there are other plant-based fine dining options. Gauthier Soho, which doesn’t have a star but appears in the Michelin guide, is close by, and there are a handful of other Michelin-starred vegan establishments around the globe. One of these is New York’s Eleven Madison Park, which has three stars, and was recently described as “spectacular” by David and Victoria Beckham.
Read more: Environmentalist Al Gore Spotted At Vegan Restaurant
