A Rather Refined Veganuary: Garden-Led Plates & Plant-Forward Pleasure
22 December 2025
We all remember when Veganuary felt like a month-long apology to your taste buds, a sort of culinary hairshirt that we put on to atone for the indulgences of the festive season. In its early years it carried the spirit of a challenge and a test of resolve
A decade later and the mood has completely shifted. The best Veganuary hotels in the UK now treat the event as an invitation rather than an obligation, with tasting menus, afternoon teas and garden-led cooking that feels subtle, elegant and deeply satisfying.
This is the moment when kitchens let seasonal British produce take centre stage and winter greens, orchard fruit and root vegetables are treated with the kind of reverence usually reserved for signature ingredients. Across the country, chefs are proving that luxury vegan British food has evolved into a confident, expressive and quietly sophisticated modern cuisine.
Whether you are fully committed to the month or simply flirting with a greener lifestyle, these seven hotels offer a richly indulgent and beautifully considered way to savour Veganuary and the months ahead.
Set on Pydew Mountain with views across to Conwy Castle and Eryri (Snowdonia), Bodysgallen Hall is one of Wales’s most atmospheric country-house hotels. In its 2 AA Rosette Dining Room, Head Chef Abdalla El Shershaby offers a dedicated plant-based menu that’s genuinely enjoyable. You might start with heritage beetroot with vegan feta or melon compressed with cured fennel, before moving on to generous mains such as herb risotto with estate vegetables or roasted squash with king oyster mushrooms. Desserts continue the theme with black pepper caramel pineapple or a dark chocolate cake sharpened with redcurrant sorbet. This is luxury vegan British food shaped by seasonal British produce and served with an absolute sense of place.
Set in the quiet Wiltshire countryside, Whatley Manor invites you into a benchmark of modern, mindful luxury. When you take your seat in The Dining Room, one of the first in the UK to receive a Michelin green star, you can feel that commitment reflected in its plant-based tasting menu. Here you’re met with dishes of the calibre of aged carrot with pomelo, chilli and lime, tempura aubergine with perilla and a remarkably gratifying risotto XO with cucumber and enoki. Even dessert draws you in, bringing together orange, macadamia and pistachio in an easy, unfussy way.
The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa
Montagu’s Mews at The Royal Crescent Hotel & Spa in Bath invites you to enter plant-based heaven wrapped in calm, understated Georgian elegance. Once you’re seated in these elegant surroundings, Head Chef Martin Blake’s vegan tasting menu feels deliberately composed rather than dutiful, a six-course celebration of seasonal British produce. You’ll encounter dishes built around beetroot, carrot and artichoke, each treated with the sort of attentiveness usually reserved for the finest cuts of meat and lifted with unexpected touches like Douglas fir or black cherry. It’s a plant-based fine dining hotel with precision and personality, entirely at ease in one of the country’s most iconic luxury hotels.
Vegan food isn’t just about lunch or dinner, and Boringdon Hall proves it with an afternoon tea that feels every bit as thoughtfully put together as a full tasting menu. This grand Devonshire manor may have a past that stretches back as far as the Domesday Book, but what arrives at your table is entirely contemporary. Served in the dramatic setting of the Great Hall, with its carved stone hearth, tall windows and the soft glow of a log fire, the hotel’s plant-based afternoon tea offers its own unique interpretation of this quintessentially British ritual. As you settle in, you’ll find delicate sandwiches, generous patisserie and glossy little cakes arriving alongside warm scones that are soft, fragrant and impossible to resist.
Set in the heart of the New Forest at Beaulieu, The Montagu Arms offers vegan dining that feels inspired, rooted in nature and designed for the whole year. With ingredients drawn directly from its gardens and the surrounding forest, the kitchen invites you to savour dishes crafted by Executive Head Chef Alistair Craig and his team: from heritage beetroot with raspberry, hazelnut and truffle to oyster mushrooms with shallot ketchup. A stay here, whether dining in The Terrace or unwinding in Monty’s Inn after a walk beneath ancient trees, becomes a tranquil and exceptionally satisfying getaway for the plant-based diner.
The Swan at Lavenham Hotel and Spa
Nestled in the centre of historic Lavenham in Suffolk, The Swan balances medieval charm with a crisp, modern sensibility. Here you can enjoy the exquisite vegan menu beneath the soaring beams of The Gallery or in the more relaxed surroundings of Mess Call 487, with its open fire and garden views. Dictated by the produce of the moment, dishes feature highlights such as confit king oyster mushrooms, tofu Niçoise and a richly spiced butternut and chickpea tagine. When it’s time for something sweet, you’ll find comforting fruit crumbles and a smooth cheesecake that absolutely hits the spot.
The Athenaeum offers a full, year-round plant-based experience that goes well beyond January, making conscious dining feel effortlessly at home in the heart of Mayfair. At the relaxed yet chic 116, Executive Chef Ian Howard brings a metropolitan gleam to the plate, where vegetables are never a side note but take centre stage in dishes such as miso-glazed aubergine and celeriac carpaccio with apple and hazelnut. The vegan afternoon tea is a particular delight, with pastries, scones and all the ceremony you’d hope for, turning even the greyest day into something decidedly glamorous.
From Welsh hillsides to New Forest gardens and from Devon manor houses to Mayfair dining rooms, chefs across the country are showing that Veganuary is no longer a month of penance. Instead it’s an invitation to enjoy winter at its richest with plant based dining hotel experiences and the best luxury vegan food Britain has to offer.
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