What is so great about Northern Thailand is the huge vegan restaurant Chiang Mai selection. There are vegan and vegetarian restaurants elsewhere in Thailand, but they generally are your standard “Jay” (a Buddhist form of veganism) lunch buffet and are not always amazing. Sometimes they are, mind me. But I didn’t visit any of those whilst in Chiang Mai, because they can be found everywhere else. Instead, I went for the organic, farm-to-table, macrobiotic, healthy salad bar concepts, and all the different and original options in-between, because they truly are what make Vegan Chiang Mai so special.
And what is more amazing is that there are new vegan and vegetarian restaurants opening almost every month. When you decide to explore the vegan food Chiang Mai has to offer, keep your eyes open when walking around as you will always find a new option around the corner.
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Wondering which are the best vegan restaurants Chiang Mai has got for you? Here are the places I visited. Heartfelt thanks to João and Sara of No Footprint Nomads for their precious collaboration in updating this guide, you guys rock!
THE COMPLETE VEGAN CHIANG MAI GUIDE
1. PUN PUN
I visited the Wat Suan Dok location only, and I quickly decided it was one of the best vegetarian restaurants Chiang Mai has based solely on a dish called nam hed song kreung, a fermented mushroom sausage served with lime, red onion, ginger, chili, spring onion, cilantro and cashew nuts. Take a bite of sausage and a little bit of everything else at once. Sit back and open your eyes wide as the flavors mingle and clash and collide and party with each other. It was my first encounter with a vegan version of the ubiquitous Thai fermented sausage and all I have to say is: best vegan food Chiang Mai? Also worth a mention were the fruit and veggie salad with seeds and legumes, the spicy and sour glass noodle and mushroom salad, and the Yen ta four, a “fat noodle” soup with beetroot lime sauce. Everything here seems to be great, in fact. Closes at 5pm and all day Wednesday. Pun Pun is also an advocate for sustainable travel in Thailand and it is possible to volunteer at their farm.
2. HAPPY GREEN
Happy Green is a bit of an unknown gem. Located in a remote and lovely little rustic oasis on the bank of the Ping River, they serve the most humongous organic salads I have ever seen. I ordered that said salad every time, the priciest item on the menu at 60 baht ($2!) and saw the waitress proceed to the backyard to literally pick my lunch straight out of their organic garden. There is a selection of low-fat raw vegan dressings, but if you are 100% raw, beware that there may be some cooked sweet potatoes in your salad (which I love). There is also a lunch buffet out front, but the fresh salad menu is really what makes this place shine on the Chiang Mai vegan restaurant scene. Closes at 7pm. Discount if you come by bicycle.
menu // directions
3. AMRITA GARDEN
Tucked away in a quiet little garden, Amrita serves a mix of Japanese-inspired and Western macrobiotic fare, all prepared with organic ingredients. The daily macrobiotic lunch comprises of a few veggie dishes, a detox soup, a mug of papaya leaf tea, and a rice bowl that I urge you to pay the extra 10b and swap for the rice balls wrapped in seaweed and pickled mustard leaves. The portions are small but satisfying and the food is refreshingly not over-seasoned. On a separate visit, I also tried the veggie burger and the pasta bolognese and found them to be the best I’ve had in some time, the burger especially. Amrita is an all-around winner. Closes at 7pm.
menu // directions
4. GOODSOULS KITCHEN
Probably one of the best Chiang Mai vegan burgers you’ll ever eat. One of the new places in town, with a very sophisticated environment, not the typical vegan place at all. The staff is very friendly and speaks English, so you will have no problem asking about the menu. They also sell amazing vegan cakes, like the chocolate one you see in the image, which is a rare find as far as vegan restaurant Chiang Mai goes. I recommend you explore it at night as it is when its coziness and romantic atmosphere excels.
menu // directions
5. DA’S HOME BAKERY
This is my go-to place on days I’m on the move for their pre-packaged vegan granola bars, freshly baked rolls, and soy yogurt. Come early (before 8am) and watch the life go past before farang flood the street as people set up their market stalls and shoot the shit around a grill full of weird things on skewers and sticky rice. The coffee is delicious and so is the avocado/tomato bruschetta. Closes at 5pm.
6. V SECRET
Located inside the friendly Ploen Ruedee Night Market, one of the new night markets in town, V Secret is truly a hidden gem. You need to cross all the market and reach the kids’ playground to find it but is well worth it. All dishes are freshly cooked in front of you and served on banana leaves. There aren’t many options on the menu but they are quite tasty. My favorite was the tempeh spinach curry. You’ll probably eat for 100 Baht, which is still cheap for the touristic location it is in.
7. BEE VEGAN
Tucked in a small dead-end close to Suthep Road, this small local place offers many vegan Thai dishes. I love the fermented mushroom starter they serve with its blended flavor of umami and vinegar which is quite unique. Very cheap, a dish costs around 60 Baht, and sometimes they have some vegan desserts too. Yay!
8. FREE BIRD CAFÉ
The food here is mostly Burmese, with Thai and Western options thrown in for good measure. One of the reasons for the Burmese cuisine is that the restaurant is a social enterprise and all profit goes to the Thai Freedom House which was created to support refugees from Burma and Thai Hill Tribes. What I was interested in were the Shan salads: for 110 baht, you can choose an assortment of any three of them and add a bowl of steam rice for a further 20 baht. I loved the fermented tea leaf salad and the green tomato salad. There is a wide selection of rice, noodle, and curry dishes (the pumpkin ginger curry is excellent) and a great vegan breakfast Chiang Mai menu (I spied some vegan pancakes and “milk” shakes in there!). Support something great and eat amazing food!
9. BUBBLES LIVE
Edit. Sadly Bubbles has closed 🙁
Nice bright restaurant, rather exuberant but nonetheless very friendly French owner, tasty if a little nondescript vegetarian restaurant Chiang Mai option. The organic menu felt a little overpriced for the size of the portions, but I understand that the dishes are made with quality ingredients. I had a brown rice salad and it was a VERY light bite, albeit a delicious one. Superb spring rolls. They are also famous for their nutritious wheatgrass shots. The set menus are excellent value, with a large Chiang Mai vegetarian curry, rice and fruit shake coming in at a little over $2.
10. SALAD CONCEPT
I read an especially gruesome review for Salad Concept on TripAdvisor involving a cockroach in a salad, but I still decided to give it a go one day because it was on my way and I was in a rush. I’m glad I did because I found a clean restaurant (the Nimmanhamein branch) and a generous salad at a really good price. Salad Concept could possibly be one of the most westernized restaurants in all of Chiang Mai, but it’s convenient when you’re on the go and want to choose exactly what you are eating. The dressings are quite oily, but otherwise, it’s a great vegetarian food Chiang Mai option, much better than the sadly overhyped Juicy4U. Open late.
menu // directions
11. DADA KAFE
Dada Kafe has a lovely garden out front and makes their own peanut butter and kombucha – which is enough for me to like them straight away and a great vegetarian Chiang Mai option. The waiter made a bit of a fuss when I asked for vegetarian khao soi Chiang Mai without egg noodles (aka: vegan). He instead recommended I have pad thai (which has egg!) because the khao soi “came” with egg noodles. C’mon now, how hard can it be to swap noodles in a recipe? He obliged in the end, but it left me a little irritated. The food was otherwise very tasty although the khao soi was lacking its traditional fresh raw veggies and pickled cabbage toppings which would have otherwise possibly made it the best vegan khao soi of Chiang Mai. Open late.
menu // directions
12. AUM
I went to Aum for the khao soi. And it’s quite good, if perhaps not super authentic – if I’m not mistaken, there are some Indian flavors in there. It also had all the pickled cabbage and raw onion fixings you’d hope for, which is mandatory for a khao soi if you ask me. Aum is one of the rare restaurants in the Vegan Chiang Mai ecosystem to have tempeh (Amrita and Blue Diamond also do), the spring rolls are especially great and the juices are delicious. I’ve read mixed reviews about Aum, but I like it. The upstairs sitting area is a quiet little oasis off the main road. Open late.
13. IMM AIM VEGETARIAN AND BIKE CAFÉ
Imm Aim is earning its spot here as a nice vegan cafe Chiang Mai mostly because of its cool vibe: it’s a nice chilled garden away from noise and traffic. The food is good, but the portions are a little small and on the pricey end by Thai standards. I had a cashew nut dip with a salad and sweet potato naan (the word naan should be used very loosely) that had such a long name in the menu it left me thinking I was getting a lot more than I actually did. But it tasted great and left me feeling satisfied, so I can’t really complain. Great place to chill or work. Open late.
14. ANCHAN
Cute little restaurant that is mostly worth going to just to see the cool neighborhood around Nimmanhamein Road – I ended up there after I had my hair cut at New York New York Hair Studio a few blocks away. Lovely salads and drinks, a little pricey compared with elsewhere, but the food is of excellent quality and the setting is lovely. I had the Thai mushroom salad which was spicy and fresh.
15. CAT HOUSE
We joked that this place uses child labor because our waiter was around 10 years old, but it’s a really lovely little family business and the kids seem to be happy and extremely keen to wait on and chat with customers. The food is different (some kind of Mexican-Lao-Thai-Indian fusion), affordable and the place is overall well worth the detour. The curry burrito is a brilliant idea, whether or not it delivers as much as you’d expect, I don’t know, but it was nice enough and one of the super creative vegetarian restaurants Chiang Mai options. They recently managed to open a smaller place called Cat Shack where they teamed up with Mountain Coffee to add this amazing coffee to their good food. Yummy homemade kombucha. Open late.
16. ANGEL’S SECRETS
Charming little café in a quiet street. I came here because I had heard that the khao soi was great. Alas – and despite having vegan noodles on hand – the waiter refused to make me a vegan version under the pretext that it would not be traditional. I ordered a curry instead which was very tasty. Unbelievably, they were out of steam rice – this may be the first time this has ever happened in a Thai restaurant, so I was served a side of plain Chinese noodles (the ones they would have used for khao soi, lol!). Traditional, you say?
menu // directions
17. VEGETARIAN SOCIETY
It’s impossible to be indifferent to what vegetarian society Chiang Mai is doing, offering food for free for the poor and almost for free to everyone else. Imagine a buffet where you can fill your boots with dozens of different vegan options and pay less than 10 Baht. Impressive, right? That’s what happens at this place and it is always crowded, obviously. They are only open for lunch but they are located very close to the old town, another place you must visit.
18. TASTE FROM HEAVEN
The service was great and the food tasted ok, and I really wanted to forgive them for forgetting to put chili in the food that I ordered “very spicy”. But alas, this is Thailand, and you just don’t forget to put chili in food. Honorable mention for the vegan brownie that is absolutely out of this world – make the detour and grab one to go.
19. JUICY4U
The Thai food at this cute hippy dig is bland and watered down, but my hopes were high for the “build your own salad or wrap” concept. Unfortunately, this also fell flat: the salad portions were tiny and expensive. There is so much better vegan food Chiang Mai has on offer!
20. VEGETARIAN FOOD STALL AT THE NIGHT MARKET
This place gets lots of good press online in Chiang Mai vegan restaurants lists and I don’t understand why. My guess is that people don’t dare to stray from the tourist trail and see this as one of the only vegetarian places around, but boy, are they wrong. The food here is not any cheaper than any Chiang Mai vegetarian restaurant in town and is laden in enough MSG and oil to fuel a tuk-tuk engine. Just no.
Full of delicious vegan food and ready to explore Chiang Mai?
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Oh my god, yes! I’m bookmarking the shit out of this guide, and I’ll be hitting up all these places when I eventually make it to Chiang Mai, no doubt. Thank you thank you thank you! I love me a good vegan city guide!
Haha, glad you like it! Let me know if you visit any I’ve missed 🙂
I’m not sure I’m posting on the right part here! Ha, but are all these places msg free? I have terrible reactions to it and unfortunately seems hard to get away from in Thailand :(!
Thanks!
Sarah
Hi Sarah, I am not 100% sure, but I don’t think any of those places use MSG as it tends to be more fast foody places that do so. They all speak good english though, so they will be able to help.
Thai food is FULL of msg. That was likely the “food hangover” you had one day. That said the healthy style restaurants may not use it, but if they’re vegan and more traditional style thai food, watch out. Just remember “my sai pong shoe rot” and that means “don’t add msg”
We realized this when walking in a market with our thai friend and picked up a random huge bag of what looked like salt and asked her what it was. Her response was “delicious powder, when you want food delicious, use this” and that was msg, haha.
Anyway. Thanks so much for the list, it’s going to come in handy on our trip to chiang mai.
This is a great resource Amelie! Great! We tried some of these places whilst in Chiang Mai, but there are so many we didn’t have the chance to, it makes me want to return there… only to enjoy the delicious food! 🙂
Thanks Franca! I’m already missing Chiang Mai! Where are you guys? I’m so out of the loop because of this yoga teacher training I’m doing! I’ll be catching up on my blog roll next week when this thing is over 🙂
[…] For organic veggies and herbs, we liked the Rimping Supermarket conveniently located on Lamphun road right by Loi Khro road, a 10 minute walk from our apartment. This is also a great place to get all your North American and European food cravings, but nothing here is cheap. For fruits, our absolute favorite place to go — not only in Chiang Mai, but possibly in all of Asia — was without a doubt Muang Mai: a wholesale wet market that’s open 24 hours, where we purchased bulk mangoes, passion fruits, coconuts, bananas, limes and durians at ridiculously low prices (except for the durian). For everything restaurant related, you can read my vegan guide to Chiang Mai here. […]
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Sitting in beetroot Stories Right Now 🙂 I Love your recommendations, Thank you so much!! Rock on 🙂
That’s awesome! Whatchou having?
What an excellent guide, pictures and descriptions. This is going to be very useful for my forthcoming visit. Thank you.
Hi, great article. Check out ‘Morning Glory’ at the Southern end of Propakkloa on the left. Best veggie (mostly vegan) food in Chiang Mai (equal to Amrita) in my opinion. Cookery school, great cooks, very friendly family-run restaurant. Super soups, great curries, great smoothies, very, very reasonable (most main dishes 60Bt – possibly going to raise prices to 65Bt).
Forgot to say (about Morning Glory veg restaurant) … best reviews I’ve every seen on Trip Advisor (66 ‘excellent’ out of 85, 12 ‘very good’ …. here’s the link: (I have no connection with them, just a happy customer) :
http://www.tripadvisor.ie/Restaurant_Review-g293917-d4104400-Reviews-Morning_Glory_Thai_Vegetarian_Restaurant_Cooking_Classes-Chiang_Mai.html
Thanks so much for taking the time to make this! Very helpful, can’t wait to check these places out 🙂
These all look amazing! I wasn’t vegan when I first went to Chiang Mai 🙁 but next time I will visit all of these places~ thank you! 🙂
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Great article!
The best place I ate in Chiang Mai was Blue Diamond – another tourist trap, perhaps, and not exclusively veggie – but a huge range of vegan options including an entire bakery with crossiants, tarts, cinnamon swirls, fresh bread and cupcakes. For my main course I had a tofu, avocado and peanut sauce wholemeal sandwich which was absolutely delicious.
For sure! I had a bad experience with the service the first time I went to Blue Diamond and decided not to put it on the list, but I’ve since returned and fell in love the cinnamon rolls and have meant to add it to the list ever since! 🙂
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Amelie, do you know if the muesli that comes with the fruit and soy milk is vegan at da’s home bakery? I’ve had that several times already and it just occurred to me that it may be made with butter or something!
We go to Pun Pun all the time! The one here in Hang Dong, near the nigh safari. Great food, friendly staff, and lovely atmosphere. Another place that has good vegetarian veg food is Ming Muang in Kad Farang, also in Hang Dong.
What?!! How did we not know about this post when we were in Chiang Mai last year! This is so awesome 😀 Will definitely be bookmarking this for our return this year. I think i remember people talking about Pun Pun, but we never got to it unfortunately. I’ve also heard they have a pretty awesome three day cooking class. Thanks Amelie!
Thank you for all these adress, I just arrive in Chiang mai in four days, and I am happy for that.
I ‘d like to know the difference between organic and vegan?
Organic refers to the production of the ingredients, which should not use any artificial pesticide and/or fertilizer. Eggs, meat and milk can be organic, too, if the animals eat organic, and no drugs are given to them.
Vegan refers to a person not eating any animal product, or a cuisine without animal products.
🙂
Gosh thanks so much Federico, haha! You deserve a job at Mostly Amelie 😉
what difference with vegan and organic….
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I went to The Cat House today for lunch and the salad was amazing. I hadn’t had fresh greens in weeks and it blew my mind. Had a vegan burrito which was fantastic too…and then another salad which was even better than the first. Had ridden up Doi Sethup so fully deserved that lunch IMHO. Lovely greeting from the owner/manager when I first arrived, made me feel really at home. Went back for dinner and had the Indian curry with brown rice = awesome.
Looking forward to trying out Happy Green tomorrow for their salad and whatever else catches the eye. Thanks for the tips!
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[…] This list of eats is for […]
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Ah, this was so helpful! I got to Chiang mai every winter and am going to check out as many of these restaurants as possible!
Fab! Please let me know if anything is outdated!;)
Which vegetarian food stall at which night market are you referring to?
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I’m headed to Chiang Mai later this year and would love your thoughts on the best vegan Khao Soi there! Also any advice on the availability (if any) of vegan street food? Love your blog and thanks so much!
Hey Jessica! Unfortunately, I have not been in Chiang Mai for several years and didn’t know about Khao Soi then… I can tell you that the best Khao Soi in Bangkok is at May Veggie Home, however! Have a blast and thanks so much for stopping by!! xx
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Can you include the prices?
This guide has been very helpful. Just discovered two vegan places that I don’t think are on the list, but are a must for any vegans in chiang mai, Asa, and Munchies, both are amazin af!
Hey Joshua, thanks that’s super helpful, I’ll look them up and add them to the guide! 🙂
Have fun in Thailand, I’m jealous!
Amelie
I really recommend the Blue Diamond Café!! There are a lot of vegan cakes and the breakfast ist so good. I really loved the selfmade hummus. They also have fresh juices and I will go there again because there is so much I have to try🤗
Thanks for spreading the vegan love. I have been coming to CM every year for the last 20+ years and things have definitely changed with the veg scene. Great post, the only thing I found conflict with was your reference to Taste of Heaven, having been a chef for 37 years, former restaurant owner, etc … for restaurants in CM who deal with so many tourist/special request, the fact is after cooking hundreds of meals in a given day to forget something or to make an order incorrect, though unfortunate is not necessarily a true judgement for the entire restaurant. I mean after all, we all make mistakes, but we want to be judged on our entire body of work. Rather Taste of Heaven is the best restaurant is not necessarily the point but they do produce a consistent product and are ridiculously nice. I do agree with you 100% regarding the vegan brownie. Thanks again.
Thanks for your good website and information !