Best Vegan and Vegetarian Restaurants in Totnes
Totnes has been a vegetarian stronghold long before plant-based eating became fashionable, with a counter-culture food scene that grew up in the 1970s and never really stopped. The result is a town with a genuinely impressive density of vegan and vegetarian places to eat, ranging from buffet cafes to refined small plates. Here are the best of the current crop.
Zappa’s Plant-Based Cafe, Totnes High Street
Zappa’s is the standard-bearer for licensed plant-based dining in Totnes, sitting on the High Street next to St Mary’s church. The kitchen is 100 percent animal-free and includes a strong gluten-free menu, with savoury plates, fresh organic salads, juices, smoothies, cakes, and bakes. There is also a small guesthouse upstairs for visitors who want to wake up to the same kitchen. Booking for dinner is sensible, especially in summer. The menu changes with the seasons and reflects a genuine commitment to local sourcing, even within the constraints of an entirely plant-based kitchen.
Seeds 2 Totnes, High Street
Seeds 2 is a vegetarian and vegan buffet-style cafe with a long-running reputation for honest, home-cooked food at a fair price. The all-you-can-eat lunch is genuinely good value, with a constantly changing range of curries, stews, salads, and bakes, plus fantastic bread from the neighbouring bakery. It is the kind of place where solo travellers, families, and groups can all eat well without anyone agonising over the menu. The cake counter rewards saving room, with vegan slices that quietly outperform their dairy equivalents elsewhere in town.
The Wild Fig Deli and Cafe
The Wild Fig sits at the heart of Totnes High Street, not far from the Clock Tower, and specialises in gluten-free and vegan options to eat in or take away. Expect creative cakes, freshly made soups, wraps, salads, and bakes. The deli side is useful for stocking up for self-catering, with cheeses, ferments, and pantry items alongside the cooked food. Consistently one of the highest-rated cafes in Totnes for plant-based diners. Their raw cakes are worth seeking out, with textures that defy what you would expect from no baking and no dairy.
Why Totnes does this so well
The town’s small farms and market gardens, plus the long-standing Dartington Hall food culture, keep ingredients close. Many cafes here can name the grower for their salad leaves, which is rare anywhere outside the region.
The Hairy Barista
Both branches of The Hairy Barista, at the top and bottom of the High Street, run mostly plant-based menus alongside their specialty coffee programme. The avocado toast variations, vegan cheese sandwiches, and plant-milk drinks make them excellent breakfast and lunch stops, particularly for visitors making their way up to Totnes Castle or down to the river. The eco focus and locally-sourced ingredients are part of the appeal. They also do takeaway well, which suits a coffee-and-pastry stop between shops without needing to commit to a table.
Ben’s Wine and Tapas, High Street
Ben’s is not exclusively vegetarian, but the small-plates menu includes a generous range of vegan and vegetarian options drawn from the Ben’s Farm Shop kitchen garden and producers. Expect Spanish, North African, and British plates served alongside an interesting wine list. A more grown-up evening option for visitors who want a slightly fancier meal in a relaxed setting. The vegetable plates often outshine the meat options, which says something about how seriously the kitchen treats them.
Riverford Field Kitchen, Wash Barn
The Riverford Field Kitchen just outside Totnes deserves a brief mention even though it is not strictly vegetarian. The set-menu approach gives equal weight to vegetable cookery, with deeply flavoured plant-based dishes that frequently outshine the meat course. Vegetarian and vegan diners are well looked after, and the experience of eating on a working organic farm is one of the best in the South West. Booking well ahead is essential, particularly for weekend lunches when locals and visitors compete for the same tables.
Markets and takeaway options
The Totnes Good Food Sunday market and the regular Friday and Saturday markets in the town centre offer a strong line of vegetarian street food, with rotating stalls covering everything from dosa to falafel to vegan cake. For self-catering visitors, Ben’s Farm Shop at Wash Barn between Buckfastleigh and Staverton and Greenlife Health Foods in Totnes both stock impressive ranges of plant-based pantry items, cheeses, and ferments.
Eating well around Totnes more widely
Beyond Totnes itself, the wider South Hams supports plant-based eating better than most rural areas in the UK. The Almond Thief bakery in Dartington runs vegan-friendly options, and farm shops across the region carry a strong vegetarian range. Even traditional pubs now tend to keep at least one genuine plant-based main on the menu, with the better kitchens treating it as a proper dish rather than a token gesture. Dartmouth, Kingsbridge, and Modbury all have at least one cafe or restaurant where vegan diners will be properly looked after.
For visitors planning a vegan or vegetarian break, Totnes makes things easy. Most of the High Street options sit within five minutes’ walk of each other, and a long weekend lets you sample several without ever needing the car. Add a Sunday at Riverford and a market browse on Saturday, and you have a holiday’s worth of properly good plant-based eating in one small Devon town. The town has earned its long-standing reputation for this kind of cooking, and the current generation of cafes and restaurants is keeping that reputation comfortably alive.