Saturday, September 27, 2025 |
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If you felt a tremor in the dining world this month, it wasn't the clatter of another small plate landing on marble. When Eleven Madison Park quietly shelved its vegan-only stance in favour of twin tasting menus, it looked like the end of a moment. Except, as our lead piece argues, it's not the death of plant-based dining so much as a recalibration. Lewis Hamilton's Neat Burger has shuttered, the UPF backlash has cooled our appetite for fake meat, and yet the UK is minting a more interesting future: Tendril's "mostly vegan" swagger; Plates winning a Michelin star by letting vegetables be vegetables; diners choosing better meat less often; sommeliers proving you can pour serious wine alongside plants. The mood music has shifted from absolutism to balance, from ethics to health, from virtue signalling to flavour first – and chefs from Isaac McHale to David Taylor make the case for an either-or approach that feels truer to how we want to eat now.
Which may explain the collective urge to boil a pan of water. Our pasta compendium is perfectly tuned to this in-between season when the sun still shows up but you're thinking about jumpers. There's brown-butter pumpkin tortelli that tastes like October, spaghetti alla Nerano for anyone still hoarding courgettes, and a bottarga gloss so luminous you'll wonder why you ever reached for anchovies. Cacio e pepe gets the lemon-kissed treatment, ragùs go low and slow, and truffle sneaks in without bluster. It's a line-up that rewards a glass of something and a bit of ceremony – the kind of cooking that turns a Tuesday into an occasion.
For nights when ceremony is cancelled, we've road-tested the weeknight workhorse that is the air fryer. Budget Bites this month goes beyond chips with three recipes that punch well above their shopping list: salmon roasted over jammy tomatoes and capers, sticky honey-lime wings parked next to a gnocchi "salad" that's half side, half main, and a sesame-crusted meatball banh mi that crunches exactly where it should. It's fast, affordable and – heresy to say it – more fun than standing over a pan.
And if you want to cook like the restaurant everyone still queues for, Tim Siadatan has thoughts. The Padella chef lets you in on six simple fixes that change everything: buy bronze-die pasta, ignore packet times, learn one great tomato sauce, never bin your starchy water, and actually toss the thing until pasta and sauce become one – Italians even have a word for that moment, mantecare. Then put the theory to work with recipes from his new book, including a pistachio-mint-basil pesto you'll spoon on everything, sweet-meets-brown crab tagliarini that tastes of seaside air, and the not-quite-Roman pici cacio e pepe that launched a thousand Instagram stories and a very long queue.
Plant-forward without the finger-wagging, carb-centric without the slump, thrifty without tasting it – that's the plate we're passing round this week.
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Is the vegan-only restaurant era over? |
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When the world's most famous vegan restaurant backtracks on its plant-based ethos, it feels like a turning point. But as Hannah Twiggs discovers, from Michelin-starred Plates to 'mostly vegan' Tendril, the UK's dining scene suggests something more interesting: veganism isn't dying, it's shifting – away from absolutes and towards health, flavour and balance
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When Eleven Madison Park, once the most famous vegan fine-dining restaurant in the world, announced last month that it would reintroduce meat and fish, the symbolism was hard to miss. Daniel Humm, the chef behind the three-Michelin-starred New York dining room, had made headlines in 2021 by going fully plant-based – hailed at the time as radical, necessary and perhaps even inevitable.
Now, four years later, the experiment is over. "Over the last three years, we came to understand that while we gained some guests who celebrated this bold move, we had also unintentionally kept people out," Humm admitted in a statement. From October, EMP will offer two tasting menus: one plant-based, the other featuring dishes such as honey-lavender-glazed duck.
So, was this the moment the vegan bubble burst? Or does it say more about how the conversation has shifted – away from absolutes and into something more nuanced?
What makes EMP's reversal especially interesting for British diners is that Humm once tried the same here. In 2021, while running Davies & Brook at Claridge's, he proposed turning the Mayfair restaurant fully plant-based. The hotel refused, saying it "respects and understands" his vision but that it was "not the path we wish to follow here … at the moment." The partnership ended soon after.
That episode hinted at what we're now seeing globally: prestige veganism colliding with commercial reality. Even Claridge's sensed the market for all-vegan fine dining wasn't strong enough in the UK.
Read the full article here
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| More tasty recipes inside |
Enjoy endless inspiration with recipes, interviews and more in your latest Indy/Eats food and drink magazine, one of your Independent Premium subscription benefits |
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| This is a stunning cookbook that delivers over 100 recipes – meat, vegetarian and everything in between – for people who want restaurant-level pasta from their own kitchen. Fresh pastas, ragùs, gnocchi, filled shapes, crisp baked dishes and sauces built to cling. Elegant, accessible, beautiful photography and enough technique to lift your pasta from everyday to exceptional.
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