With PETA awarding Kolkata the title of the most vegan-friendly of 2025, it's high time you dig into Bengali food!
If you have ever wandered through Kolkata (with its tram system, its ability to balance intellectualism with street-side adda, and its affection for food), you will know that the city doesn’t so much celebrate cuisine as it assumes you’ve shown up for the food. This November-end, as World Vegan Month rolls out, PETA India has bestowed upon Kolkata the title of India’s Most Vegan-Friendly City of 2025. It’s an accolade the city accepts the way a seasoned grandmother accepts compliments on her cooking: and aware that you probably don’t know half of what she’s capable of feeding you. Mayor Firhad Hakim, Mayor and the Hon’ble Minister-In-Charge of West Bengal’s Department of Urban Development and Municipal Affairs, received the award on behalf of the metropolis.
What Makes Kolkata Vegan-Friendly?
Traditional Bengali cuisine is practically a vegan’s treasure chest, though this tends to astonish outsiders who assume the region runs exclusively on maachh, sandesh, and rasgulla. But take a closer look and you’ll find a pantry built on plant-based brilliance: aloo posto, cholar dal, tomato-khejur chutney, puchka, and other dishes that are vegan.
The city’s eateries are equally committed to the cause. Burma Burma and The Flaming Bowl offer stir-fries, creative salads, and tofu. Cafés such as Aldo Café, Out and Beyond, Glenburn Café, and Sienna Store and Café pour plant-milk chai and coffee. The Daily serves vegan cakes and ice creams, Oven to Plate is a fully vegan cloud bakery, and Vegan Daily even supplies mock seafood so you can produce a compassionate maacher jhol without confusing your fish-loving relatives. Add to that Vegan World, Eastern India’s first vegan food distribution company, and you have an ecosystem where being vegan is not a diet but a way of life.
What Is Aloo Posto?
Which brings us, quite naturally and Kolkata-ishly, to Aloo Posto. Aloo Posto is one of those rare dishes that manages to look tranquil and taste profound. It involves potatoes, white poppy seeds, mustard oil. Every Bengali household will swear their recipe is the true one, and they are all correct, because Aloo Posto is more philosophy than formula.
Aloo Posto is a classic Bengali dish (Getty Images)
Aloo Posto Recipe
(Serves 3–4)
Ingredients:
4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into medium cubes
4 tablespoons white poppy seeds (posto)
1-2 green chillies, slit or chopped
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
2 tablespoons mustard oil
½ teaspoon kalonji (nigella seeds/ kalo jeere)
Salt to taste
Water as needed
A drizzle of raw mustard oil at the end for aroma
A few extra green chillies for those who like their posto spicy
Method:
Place the poppy seeds in warm water for about 30 minutes. This softens the husk and allows for a smoother paste. Then grind the soaked seeds with a little water until you have a thick, grainy paste. Posto should retain a subtle texture.
Heat the mustard oil in a kadhai or deep pan until it shimmers. Bengali cooks will tell you to let it reach its “ghost-leaving-the-body” stage, but shimmering is good enough. Add the nigella seeds. They will crackle. Add the potatoes and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Add turmeric and salt. Stir as though you are coaxing the potatoes into a meaningful conversation.
Add the posto paste and green chillies. Mix well so that each potato cube is lovingly coated. Pour in just enough water to help the potatoes cook; a few tablespoons at a time. Aloo Posto must be soft but not swimming. Cover and cook on low heat for about 10-12 minutes, or until the potatoes yield easily to pressure but don’t collapse into mush.
Once done, uncover the pan and let any excess moisture evaporate. The posto should cling to the potatoes like a shawl in winter. Finish with a small drizzle of raw mustard oil if you enjoy the fragrance.
Serving Suggestions
Serve Aloo Posto with: Steamed rice (preferably warm, soft, and borderline emotional) and Dal.
Aloo Posto is a dish that fits beautifully into Kolkata’s new title as India’s Most Vegan-Friendly City of 2025. Because if there is anything the city excels at, it is reminding the world that thoughtful food doesn’t have to be loud. Sometimes it only needs potatoes, poppy seeds, mustard oil.
Vegan cuisine has been growing in popularity for more than a decade. Around the world, from food trucks and fast-food-style spots to high-end establishments in places like New York, Paris, Washington, D.C., and Vienna, plant-based restaurants are making their mark on the culinary world every day.
But despite this growing popularity, pushing vegan cuisine to the general dining public remains a very uphill battle. I, myself, used to look down my nose at the idea of going out and eating a strictly plant-based meal; now, some of my favourite restaurants and most memorable dining experiences are plant-based.
According to chefs and restaurant owners around the country, people who pass on plant-based dining are missing out on one of the most exciting, healthy and flavourful experiences that they can have.
“A lot of the cooking we’ve seen in well-established restaurants is just the same cuisine made with the same techniques over and over again,” says Jaime Secor, a career chef and co-owner of Edgy Vegy, a vegan food truck in Buffalo, New York, in a phone interview.
“Plant-based establishments are more experimental; they take influence from other cultures and use different ingredients, many of which have never been applied to vegetables before, and that opens up a whole world of new creations and exciting possibilities.”
For the average restaurant guest, one constant hurdle to those possibilities is a lack of education.
The More You Try, The More You Know
“We did an event one time where we were handing out samples of tempura cauliflower,” says Sara Secor, Jaime’s sister and business partner, in a phone interview.
“And even though it was free and delicious, some people would just call it rabbit food and say it wasn’t for them.”
The belief that vegan food isn’t “real food” is a standard view among many diners I have waited on in my career. A2023 Gallup pollfound that only 1% of U.S. adults identify as vegan and only 4% as vegetarian. Global meat consumption hasmore than doubledover the last 20 years, reaching 320 million tons in 2018, driven by our increasingly busy lifestyles and desire for easy-to-make food options. Even thegrowing cost of meathas yet to affect the U.S. population’s love of ordering it off a menu.
Basically, if it’s not meat, many people believe it’s not worth their time. Sara and Jaime say that getting them out of that mentality just takes a little work and patience.
“Buffalo is a chicken wing and potatoes kind of city, so when we started, many people didn’t even know what tofu was,” says Jaime.
“Now they love plant-based food.”
Sara and Jaime cultivated that love by rolling out amazing and interesting dishes likesweet potatoes tossed in honey miso butterand topped with a gochujang drizzle (a savoury, sweet, and spicy fermented Korean chili paste), brussels sprouts fried and tossed in a vegan Vietnamese nước chấm-style sweet, sour and spicy “fish sauce”, or a roasted spiced butternut squash sandwich on house made herb focaccia with pickled grapes, maple gochujang mayo, caramelized onions and arugula.
“It was really about getting people to the window and getting them to try that one thing that will not just change their minds, but blow their minds,” says Sara.
And any chef will tell you that, at the end of the day, whether it’s meat, fish, or vegetables, wowing people first comes down to flavor.
Finger-Licking Good
“I always ask people if they ate chicken or steak that’s just cooked plain, would they enjoy it?” says Romeo Regalli, chef and co-owner of Ras Plant Based in Brooklyn, New York, in a phone interview.
“No matter what you’re cooking and eating, the reason you like it is because it’s been properly spiced, marinated and prepared.”
A James Beard Award Best Chef finalist, Regalli, who co-owns and operates Ras with his wife, Milka, says that the key to success is creating a menu that regularly challenges the expectations of what people think can be done with a vegetable. For him, that meant utilizing the Ethiopian dishes and flavors of his childhood in unexpected ways.
“We take sambusa’s (crispy and flaky pastries), traditionally filled with ground beef, and we instead use something called kitfo, a dehydrated pea crumble, and you can’t taste the difference,” says Regalli.
“Or we use berbere (ber-ber-ay), a traditional, complex, aromatic and spicy blend of 30 different spices, put it in a comfort-food style macaroni and cheese, and they work perfectly together.”
Fusion-style dishes like Ras’s cauliflower florets tossed in berbere-spiced batter, or Edgy Vedgy’s marinated tofu Bahn Mi with pickled carrots, edamame pâté, and chili crisp aioli are what set them apart, draw in even the most wary of diners and show them just how good plant-based food can be.
“As people get more familiar with who we are and what we offer, and understand that it is just delicious quality food, then they’re more willing to try new and different things,” says Jaime Secor.
When it comes to vegan dining, creating a willing customer also depends on a chef’s commitment to providing not just flavour but texture.
(Photo by Cezary Kowalski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Meat of the Matter
Today, people are often looking for a plant-based meal that mimics the experience of eating a good burger, a tasty chicken sandwich or a savoury sirloin steak. And while there are popular name brands out there that offer several tasty plant-based meats, more and more chefs are challenging themselves to develop their own products from scratch that are whole-foods-based, healthier and deliciously victual.
“All plant-based meats have their place, and they’re all good in their own way,” says Joe Egender, co-owner of Maciel’s Plant-Based Butcher Shop in Los Angeles, California.
“But in the last five or six years, there’s been an explosion of creativity among chefs and owners to produce high-quality products made with real ingredients, real proteins, that aren’t overly-processed.”
Egender and his wife, Maciel Bañales Luna, the namesake, chef and co-owner of their butcher shop, jumped into the deep end of this movement during the 2020 pandemic, and now create delicious plant-based meats that they say are nearly indistinguishable from their carnivorous inspirations. Their success took time, research and a lot of trial and error.
“When we started, I was testing different kinds of beans, spices, tofu, jackfruit, reduced seitan, learning how they worked and behaved together and taking notes on the best cooking methods and cooking times for each to make sure I got the final product just right,” says Luna, in a phone interview.
“Once I did that, then I’d have all this new knowledge I could apply to the next idea, and the next.”
Then, to make doubly sure that they got the texture, taste, smell and look of everything down pat, Egender, a native of Kansas City, where barbeque brisket, burnt ends and strip steak are arguably the three major food groups, says that they turned to every family member and friend that they could find to make doubly sure they were as good, if not better, than the real thing.
“We did taste tests with family and friends, and friends of friends, in New York, Los Angeles and Kansas City, and they all loved it,” says Egender.
“And when people in KC, especially, say that your vegan meat is excellent, you know you’re on the right path.”
Don’t Think, Experiment
That experimentation, which began with a vegan Christmas turkey in their own home, grew into a menu for their shop that today includes chorizo, salami, pastrami, mesquite turkey, steak, bacon, and more. Their vegan meats are in everything from a French take on a Philly cheese steak to a classic Reuben, quesadilla or BBQ ribs.
To this day, whenever they have a new idea, it goes through a triage of approval before it makes it to the butcher’s block.
“We never wanted our shop to make food for just vegans or vegetarians; we just wanted to make good, tasty food for everyone,” says Luna.
“So, every meat or sandwich that we put out has been tested first by our whole staff and us to make sure it is safe for everybody.”
Ravi DeRossi, the founder and CEO of Overthrow Hospitality, which oversees eight premier plant-based restaurants in New York, says this constant testing of dishes is the key to a vegan restaurant’s success.
“You have to lean into your vegetables and cook them a million different ways, until they are the best versions of themselves that they could ever be, and then build every dish around that,” says DeRossi.
Whether at Al-Andalus, their Arab-influenced tapas bar, Soda Club, the handmade pasta and pinsa (old Roman-style pizza) spot, Cadence, their vegan soul food restaurant, or their flagship location, Avant Garden, Derossi says that he and Overthrow hospitality have created a variety of successful and award-winning menus from that exact kind of due diligence.
“It’s why three of the eight vegan restaurants currently on the Michelin Guide are ours,” says DeRossi.
The growing interest in and enjoyment of quality vegan cuisine is also tied to the public’s increased awareness of just how much healthier it can be for them.
Food Is Medicine, Medicine Is Food
Today, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine/Morning Consult reports that half of U.S. adults say they know eating a plant-based diet can improve their health and help prevent chronic diseases.
“People are turning the corner on vegan food, its benefits and how much it can help alleviate some severe conditions,” says Dr. Tionna L. Jenkins, a public health and policy expert, in a phone interview.
A recent study found that a vegan diet can reduce breast cancer by 31% in young people and 26% in older vegans, as well as reduce the risk of lymphoma and prostate cancer. Another study found that replacing animal-based foods with plant-based foods could reduce the risk of colorectal cancers or dying from cancer. When coupled with regular exercise and stress reduction, a vegan diet may also reduce the symptoms of mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer’s disease.
“If you eat plant-based foods, you can improve your digestion, reduce inflammation, manage weight loss long term, and reduce your risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, autoimmune diseases, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes,” says Jenkins.
“Immediate reductions in some of these issues can be seen even if people invest just 20% of their eating habits in a vegan diet.”
Romeo Regali says he witnessed firsthand how much a vegan diet can change a life, and that the experience was part of the inspiration for his restaurants’ exclusively plant-based menu.
“In 2017, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and they gave him a three-year life expectancy,” says Regali.
“I became his personal chef for six months while he was doing his chemo, cooking plant-based food that we grew up on for him, and now he is cancer-free.”
By making healthy, delicious food that pleases everyone, regardless of dietary preference, chefs and restaurateurs are changing the way people think about vegan dining everywhere.
“Ten to twenty years ago, the majority of vegan food was terrible, and it was even worse thirty years ago, and that experience often gets stuck in people’s brains,” says DeRossi.
“But today 85% of our clientele are non-vegan, and that’s because we’re always just trying to be excellent restaurants that serve inherently good food.”
Cadence’s southern-fried lasagna, with soy and mushroom bolognese, herbed tofu ricotta, and tomato sauce, Avant Gardens signature Hen of the Woods, with mushroom purée, kohlrabi, and pickled hon shimeji or Soda Club’s carbonara pinsa of apple, smoked mushrooms, fried artichokes, and arugula, are the kinds of thoughtful and savory dishes that he says keep people coming in again and again.
Soda Club's Carbonara Pinsa (Photo by Amy Elisabeth Spasoff)
“Half of our reviews online all say, ‘I’m not vegan, but this was amazing,’” says DeRossi.
“In general, people are giving vegan food another chance, and it’s because they are finally finding the right restaurants.”
The Economic Times found that 59% of American adults always, sometimes, or usually eat vegetarian meals (including vegan options), while 30% said they always, sometimes, or typically eat vegan meals. In 2025, roughly 25.8 million people worldwide participated in Veganuary, a global campaign to try living a plant-based lifestyle for January and beyond.
“There isn’t this solid line anymore between vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters,” says Egender.
“The overwhelming response we run into today is, ‘if it’s good, I will eat it.’”
So, the next time you are thinking about going out to eat, think about eating vegan. Because thanks to chefs and owners like Sara and Jaime Secor, Romeo Regali, Joe Egender, Maciel Bañales Luna and Ravi DeRossi, plant-based food is just getting better and better.
This 30-second recipe might be the easiest thing you make all week
KEY POINTS
Miyoko Schinner’s vegan butter uses just three ingredients and takes 30 seconds to make.
The recipe is fully customizable and can be made allergen-friendly.
Homemade vegan butter can save money and reduce reliance on store-bought options.
Vegan chef Miyoko Schinner is the namesake and creator behind Miyoko’s Creamery, a tasty source for non-dairy products. Though Schinner and the brand have parted ways—she recently tried to buy the brand back, but was unsuccessful—she’s still making vegan magic in the kitchen. She recently came out with a new cookbook, The Vegan Creamery, which teaches you how to make your own plant based cheese, ice cream and other “dairy” products.
The book includes a recipe for vegan butter that only has three ingredients: refined coconut oil, liquid oil such as avocado or sunflower oil and plant milk such as soy or oat milk. If you need to whip up something for your vegan guests (or anyone who can’t have dairy) this holiday season, you’ll need this recipe handy. Plus, the recipe takes a whole 30 seconds, so you don’t need to prepare for hours ahead of time, like you might if you were churning your own dairy-based butter.
On her Instagram, Schinner talks viewers through the process of making the “real” Miyoko’s vegan butter. She specifies that the coconut oil should be melted but not hot and that the other liquid oil should be chilled in the fridge. She says it should be “very, very cold.” Salt is an optional ingredient.
Credit: Getty Images. EatingWell Design.
Here’s what Schinner recommends: Using ¾ cup coconut oil and 1 cup liquid oil, blend the oils together first, then pour in ½ to 1 cup of cold plant-based milk. She says to “process” it until it looks like mayonnaise. She uses an immersion blender to mix upher vegan butter. If you want it salted, add a big pinch at the end and blend again. The video ends with Schinner enjoying her butter on a piece of crusty bread.
You can use vegan butter as a one-to-one swap for dairy butter. Since vegan butter usually costs a bit more than dairy butter at the store—at least in my experience—it can be cost-effective to save by making your own vegan butter yourself.
Depending on what vegan butter you buy at the store, it may have allergens that you or your vegan friends need to avoid. With Miyoko’s recipe, you can swap around the liquid oil and the plant-based milk to avoid whatever ingredients aren’t safe for you. Plus, this recipe could be a great one to keep on hand if you or a loved one are sensitive to dairy, too.
Because the ingredients of vegan butter might liquify easier, and vegan butter can be softer in general, follow directions closely when baking with it or try to keep it at the consistency of regular butter when baking and using “creamed” butter. You may need to chill it and keep a close eye on it as you go.
Consider swapping this butter into our recipes for delicious compound butters that are perfect for the holidays. For instance, our Apple Pie Butter is perfect for morning toast at Christmas, while this Cranberry Butter is a vivid, glamorous condiment for your dinner party rolls. And if you need something really stunning for weekend brunch, consider a stack of pancakes with Pecan Pie Butter on the side. Whatever you use this butter for, making your own butter at home is sure to have you feeling like an industrious chef all day long.
