The Ultimate Vegan Resource List

Food, Recipes, and Restaurants

Vegan food is indeed a growing trend, however, it can be difficult to fully understand the intricacies and how delicious it can actually be! Get the low down on our favourite recipes, restaurants and dishes that are vegan and really, really tasty.

Recipes

• PETA: These guys are the original animal rights activists. They’ve been around for years. Here, you can browse by cuisine or meal types.
• All Recipes Random Recipe Spinner: We think this one is pretty cool. It does what it says on the box – click a button to spin the wheel and get a vegan recipe instantly.
• Good Food, Taste, SBS, Best Recipes and Jamie Oliver: These aren’t vegan specific sites but they all have subsections for vegan-friendly recipes and because so many people visit them, they’re more likely to have been trialled and rated by other users.
• Vegangela: This is a site by a Canadian expat living in Sydney and she does some pretty awesome recipes that are worth checking out.

Vegan Restaurants and Eateries

• The Vegan Easy Eating Out Guide: You can search for 100 per cent vegan food vans, restaurants and cafes near you (by state) on this site – great as a source of inspiration.
• Vomad Life ranks the Top Five Aussie Vegan-Friendly Fast Food Joints: This article lists the top five “naughty” vegan restaurants. Check out Lord of the Fries – it is fully vegan and their Belgium sauce (which used to be non-vegan) has recently changed to being Vegan and is VERY more-ish.
• Unleashed’s Nationwide Guide to Vegan Eats: Another good guide if you don’t want to be overwhelmed with choice. There’s a mix of fast food and restaurants here to explore.
• The Pancake Parlour Vegan Menu: The Pancake Parlour changed its menu last year to include Vegan pancakes, capitalising on the opportunity to cater to a new and growing niche and we’re not complaining.
• Sydney Chic’s Best Vegan Eats: The eight best vegan places to try while you’re in Sydney.
• Visit Brisbane’s Ultimate List of Vegan Food: Brisbane has a surprisingly wide range of vegan options. We’d even go so far as to say Brisbane vegan food is better than Sydney. Though Melbourne still leads to the way.

Our top vegan picks every side of Melbourne City:

City CBD

• Fo Guan Art Gallery: Get the Cumquat Tea, B15 and the Crispy Taro and Sweet Potato Rolls.

South Side

• Monk Bodhi Dharma: Order the Zucchini Hotcakes or Hungry Jimbo.
• Sister of Soul: Try the Massaman Curry.
• Matcha Mylk Bar: Get the Vegan Eggs with mushroom bacon, corn fritters, almond feta, and spiced avo guac and the Charcoal Chai (important note: you often have to wait one hour).

North Side

• Shakahari: Menu changes regularly, so we don’t have specific faves here but everything is great.
• Smith and Daughters: Get the Picante Panquetes and the Breakfast Burrito. You can actually buy their whole menu as a recipe book too.
• Vegie Bar: A Fitzroy institution, the food is renowned but there can be a queue.
• Yong Green: Nachos and they do great non-milk smoothies (they have a bunch of healthy stuff as well worth eating).

Vegan Products, Grocery Shops & Online Stores

• Accidentally Vegan Products by PETA: Supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths stock a huge range of products that aren’t necessarily labelled vegan but are in fact safe for Vegans to eat. Hence the name Accidentally Vegan. This list is specific to Australian brands.
• Vegan Products you can buy at Woolworths and Coles: This is similar to the above list but it also contains product images which make it easier to identify them in the supermarket if you’re not familiar with the product.
• The Vegan Easy Cheat Sheet: This cheat sheet that covers recommended lists of all vegan-friendly products (including non-food products) as well as a list of product ingredient numbers to steer clear of right at the end.
• Vegan Grocery Shops in Australia: This is a list of some grocery shops in each state that focus on vegan food and products.
• The Cruelty Free Shop: This is the main vegan go-to when it comes to online shopping. They have over 1500 vegan food items and cruelty-free products including meals, mock-meats, egg and dairy replacers.
• Dayia Foods: This brand is particularly important because they do amazing dairy-free cheese, yoghurt and cheesecake alternatives. They’re available in most vegan-friendly grocery stores.
• Flora and Fauna: They are Australia’s largest cruelty-free and vegan shop with exclusive eco-friendly products.

Communities and Entertainment

Vegan meet-up groups and communities can be a great way to learn more about veganism and the community – get all your questions answered, including information on the belief systems and ideals.

Meet-up groups

• The Melbourne Vegan Meet-up Group (the latest vegan meetup group in Australia)
• Happy Vegans and Vegetarians Melbourne
• Happy Fun Vegans Melbourne
• Melbourne Vegans
• V Stars Sydney
• Vegan Vision
• BrisVegan Foodies

Vegan Events

• On Eventbrite: This site is always useful for finding local events for vegans:
  Melbourne
  Sydney
  Brisbane

• World Vegan Day in Melbourne: The ultimate celebration and festival for vegans in Melbourne. This event usually happens in October every year.
• Cruelty Free Festival in Sydney: This is a full-day festival for Sydney, also held on November 11, for folk of all ages that love animals.
• Vegan Festival in Adelaide: This festival goes over two massive days packed with information, vegan food and live music.

Forums

• Unleashed Community Forum: Run by Animals Australia, the Unleashed Community Forum encompasses a broad range of topics and is also focussed on Australians and Australian content.
• Happy Cow, Veggie Boards, Vegan Forum and Philosophical Vegan: These are all global forums. Facebook groups are normally the first place to go if you have specific vegan questions, however, these forums are a good alternative if you’re not getting specific questions on social media.

Vegan Blogs

• Vegan Sparkles: Run by Bec Weller, a Health and Life Coach, Author, Speaker and contributor to The Australia, News.com.au, Good Health and Elle Magazine
• Passionately Keren: Foodie, photographer and video producer Keren documents her life as a passionate vegan.
• Veggieful: Married power-couple Maddi and Jerome post reviews, how-to’s, recipes, giveaways and more!
• Like a Vegan: Food, fashion, and travel. Not to mention a funny Madonna related pun.
• The Minimalist Vegan: Canberra based couple meld the worlds of veganism and minimalism to lead a healthy, simple, cruelty-free lifestyle.
• My Goodness Kitchen: Amanda, her daughter, patient husband and dog Scout are a team of recipe testers.
• Keepin It Kind: Join animal lover, travel fanatic and chickpea devotee Kristy and her husband as they blog about their favourite recipes.
• The Raw Food Institute of Australia: Find out more about the health benefits of raw, whole, plant-based food and diet. Vegan recipes, culinary online courses, nutrition coaching, weight management and more.

Facebook groups

Apart from the groups below, it’s also really worth searching for local groups in your area such as Sydney Vegans or Melbourne Vegans or Tasmania Vegans, etc. There are usually sub groups on a local basis that are particularly useful for sharing information about new vegan restaurants or finding hidden places that cater to vegans even if they don’t have a fully vegan menu.

• Vegan Revolution: Promoting veganism through kindness and respect.
• Vegan Australia: VA’s vision is a world in which people treat animals with respect, ensure justice for them and enable them to live their lives free of human exploitation, use and ownership.
• Vegans in Australia: Vegans helping other vegans with information, advice, event information and a sense of community.
• Animals Australia: Over 1.5 million followers can’t be wrong. Animals Australia is a must like a page for any vegan.
• PETA Australia: The easiest way to stay up to date or get involved with PETA in Australia.
• Vegan Easy: Stay up-to-date with other 30-day challenges! Vegan Easy post awesome videos and photos of Vegan events.
• Australian Vegan Foodies: Fancy yourself a bit of a foodie and need some like-minded taste testers? They just love vegan food.
• Vegans United: For those that want to live as deliberately vegan as possible to bring as much change for a peaceful planet.
• Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness: Who says you need to eat meat to be ripped. Get your daily fitness and bodybuilding inspiration.

Instagram

• Best Aussie and Kiwi Vegans to Follow on Instagram: This is a comprehensive list of animal lovers including Peter Siddle, Liam Hemsworth, Stephanie Lange and the Vegan Dancer Girl.
• 10 Vegan Instagram Accounts You Should Definitely Be Following: Add some diversity to your Instagram feed, follow these vegan accounts that have really nailed the whole foods lifestyle.
• The 20 Best Vegan Instagram Accounts to Follow: Our favourite from this list by far would be Mississippi vegan. His food is just unbelievable to look at. Unfortunately, he is based in the US, although he does do food photography courses in Hawaii once a year.
• Saveur’s 15 Favorite Vegan Instagrams: These 15 feeds show off some of the prettiest of the plant-based food world.
• These are a list of the best and most widely used vegan hashtags on Instagram which you can use to tag your photos: #vegan #veganlife #veganfood #veganfoodie #veganlifestyle #veganfoodshare #veganfoodporn #veganforlife #vegannoms #vegansofinstagram #veganfriendly #plantbased #veganbreakfast #vegansmoothie #veganthickshake

Learning Resources

If you’re looking for education or inspiration, there are plenty of resources to help you get going.

Best Books/Magazines

• The 40+ Best Vegan Books You Must Get Your Hands On In 2017: These are a really interesting mix and if you’re just starting out it can be worthwhile digging a bit deeper into it when blogs begin to feel too superficial.
• 33 Best Vegan Books for 2017: Vegan beginner books, recipe books and a book on vegan cheese.
• Vegan Bookstore: Vegan.com provides a list of the latest vegan focussed books around internationally.
• The Complete Vegan Product Guide to Australia: The. Complete. Australian. Vegan. Product. Guide. MUST HAVE.

How-to Guides

• Veganaustralia’s Guide to Veganising Recipes: See how easy it can be to take recipes and make them deliciously vegan.
• Vegan Label Reading Guide: This is great for understanding what ingredients are in your store-bought foods that aren’t vegan.

Cool Vegan Apps

• Happy Cow on the Go: For checking vegan-friendly places wherever you are.
• Do Eat Raw: Easier to cook a meal with recipes you can access on your phone in the kitchen. These are raw/vegan.
• Is It Vegan?: This app allows you to scan the barcode and figure out if what you want to buy or eat is vegan.
• VegEMOJI: This one’s a bit silly, but not everything needs to be serious all the time… great for marketing too.
• Bunny Free: You can use this app to search for companies by name and see whether or not they test on animals.
• Fair Food Forager: Fair Food Forager changes the way the world eats by assisting with everyday ethical food decisions.

FAQ

This is a list of good frequently asked questions which either a transitioning vegan may ask, or the family and friends or even diners.

• Vegan Easy: There are lots of questions that friends and family ask new vegans and this is a particularly good one for Aussie vegans because it refers to Australian sources of health information such as the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
• 7Day Vegan: Another good source of Q&A.
• Vegan: Less information here although does cover a bit of philosophical thinking as well.
• Melanie Joy: Carnism: This is longer and in our opinion, better than her Ted Talk because it goes into more depth and provides a more convincing overall argument for veganism as a result.

Here are just a few insights on Veganism in Australia as of 2016:

• 80 per cent of vegans are females
• 80 per cent of vegans are under 40
• The main reason people go vegan is for ethical reasons
• Approximately 50 per cent of vegans were already vegetarians before going vegan
• 60 per cent of participants said they have influenced or convinced someone to go vegan