What's vegan in 24 world cuisines

Why cuisine-by-cuisine beats generic vegan advice

Generic advice — 'avoid meat, dairy and eggs' — collapses the moment you sit down in a restaurant that cooks with ingredients the advice never named. A Thai green curry contains no visible animal product yet is usually built on fish sauce and shrimp paste. An Indian dal looks entirely plant-based but is often finished with ghee. A Japanese vegetable dish is frequently simmered in dashi made from bonito flakes.

Each guide in this hub is written around the specific risk profile of one cuisine: the dishes that are plant-based by tradition, the two or three ingredients that quietly are not, and a phrase that gets you a truthful answer from a busy kitchen.

How much of a typical menu is already vegan?

In practice, between a fifth and a half of a typical menu is vegan or one substitution away from it. Cuisines with strong religious vegetarian traditions — Indian, Ethiopian, Levantine, Buddhist Chinese and Japanese temple cooking — sit at the high end. Cuisines built around dairy or cured meat, such as classic French or northern Italian, sit at the low end, though even there the vegetable and legume side of the menu is substantial.

The practical implication: you almost never need a vegan restaurant. You need to know which two questions to ask.

Eating vegan in any cuisine: step by step

1. 1

   Start from the naturally vegan list

   Open the cuisine guide and pick a dish that is plant-based by tradition rather than by substitution. It tastes better and is far less likely to be modified badly.

2. 2

   Name the ingredient, not the diet

   Ask 'is there fish sauce in this?' rather than 'is this vegan?'. Kitchens answer ingredient questions accurately even when 'vegan' is unfamiliar.

3. 3

   Check the cooking fat

   Butter, ghee and lard are the most common invisible additions. One question about the pan covers most of the risk.

4. 4

   Confirm the garnish

   Cheese, yoghurt, honey drizzle, egg wash and cream finishes are added after cooking and rarely appear on the menu description.

5. 5

   Scan anything packaged

   For sauces, breads and snacks sold in shops, a barcode scan in VeggieOS settles the question in seconds.

The animal ingredient most likely to catch you out, by region

Mistakes to avoid

Frequently asked questions

Which world cuisine is easiest to eat vegan?

Indian and Ethiopian cuisine are the easiest, because both have centuries-old vegetarian and fasting traditions that produce fully plant-based dishes — dal, chana, sambar, misir wot and shiro among them. Levantine and Vietnamese food follow closely.

Is fish sauce really in everything in Thai food?

It is in most savoury sauces, curry pastes and dressings, and often in dishes that read as vegetarian. Many kitchens will substitute soy sauce if you ask before cooking starts.

How do I ask about ingredients if I do not speak the language?

Each cuisine guide includes a short ordering phrase in the local language. Naming a single ingredient is far more reliable than translating the word 'vegan'.

Are vegetable dishes in restaurants usually vegan?

Not reliably. Vegetables are frequently cooked in butter, ghee, lard or meat stock, which does not appear in the dish name. One question about the cooking fat resolves it.

Can VeggieOS check restaurant dishes?

Yes — paste an ingredient list or dish description into VeggieOS and it flags the animal-derived items with a plain-language verdict. Packaged products can be scanned by barcode. It is free with no paid plans.

Every cuisine at a glance

One table for the whole hub: what is usually safe to order, the animal ingredient that most often hides in the rest of the menu, and the sentence that gets you understood. Screenshot it before you travel.

The five ingredients that catch people out worldwide

Wherever you eat, the same handful of ingredients turn an apparently plant-based dish into a non-vegan one. Learn these five and you will catch most problems before the food arrives.