Amid the many pork soup stalls in Bangkok proper, real vegetarian food takes some serious scouting. But on Khao San Road, you don’t have to venture far to find some, for what Khao San Road lacks in authentic Thai culture, it makes up for in budget hotels and delicious vegetarian eats. The infamous road may have a reputation as a den of tourist iniquity, but during the day, it serves as haven from the heat to relax at an internet café or eat a chickpea burger.  The vegetarian restaurants are all mid-range, with dishes around 60-120 baht, and have a bohemian vibe.

Veggie tablescape.

The ethos of Ethos

Hidden behind a greasy Burger King, you will find home-fermented probiotic super foods, seven types of Kombucha tea, and even freshly baked falafel at Ethos Bakery Café Restaurant. All of the baked goods are vegan, and every dish is guaranteed to have no MSG. Smoothies and juices take up at least half of the menu; try a cooling mangosteen or beetroot juice to beat the heat. The signature coconut smoothie is the most coconut-flavoured concoction you could possibly consume, so take heed unless you mean serious coconut business. The space is small and cosy for day-long munching and tete-a-tetes, with free WiFi and floor cushion seating. You can also order food for delivery by e-mail.

May Kaidee’s Vegetarian and Vegan Experience and Cooking School is one of the oldest vegetarian restaurants near Khao San Road, established in 1988 by May Kaidee herself. There are now three locations under the May Kaidee name within Bangkok, and one in Chiang Mai run by May Kaidee's sister. Mai Kaidee boasts fresh vegetarian eats with organic leanings and a plethora of vegan options. The Samsen Road location also hosts half-day vegetarian cooking classes, complete with a trip to the local market. The menu offers Thai favourites with a healthy touch, like mango and black sticky rice, and Western-style treats like veggie noodle soup and seitan.

Basil smoothie and Kombucha tea.

In search of May Kaidee’s, you might give up and settle for Thamna Home Restaurant. But one bite of their stir-fried vegetables and you’ll realise Thamna is destination in and of itself. Within a revamped shophouse from the 1940s, Thamna boasts a vintage-chic interior and serves sizzling organic tofu, omelettes made from free-range eggs with farm-fresh mushrooms, and a salad of greens with sesame dressing. With Western and Thai dishes, including a range of spicy curries, Thamna has something for everyone.

Remember, if you are at non-vegetarian restaurant and you don’t eat meat, just say “mai sai neua-sa”, and “ka” at the end if you’re a female or “khrap” if you’re a male.

Ethos Bakery Café Restaurant
85/2 Soi Bowonrangsi (behind Burger King)
T: (02) 280 7549
www.ethosnet.biz
Open daily 09:00–22:00

May Kaidee’s Vegetarian and Vegan Experience and Cooking School
Three locations in area: 59 Tanao Rd; 111 Tanao Rd; 33 Samsen Rd, Soi 2
T: (02) 281 7699; (08) 913 73173
www.maykaidee.com/restaurants
Open daily 9:00 – 23:00

Thamna Home Restaurant
175 Samsen Rd (between Samsen 3 and 5)
T: (02) 282 4979; (08) 666 26060
www.facebook.com/pages/Thamna-Hometaurant
Open Tuesday–Sunday 11:00–23:00

Tags: cooking classes, ethos bakery, Khao San Road, may kaidee, organic, probiotic, thamna home, vegan, vegetarian

Vegetarian food in Bangkok usually falls into two categories: vaguely Mediterranean-style (roasted vegetables and couscous) or aahaan je, Chinese-style Buddhist cuisine heavy on seitan and tofu [for an excellent je option, see previous post -- and we've also covered a few other veggie options here]. Well-prepared, both styles stand ready to prove that even meat eaters can be poly amorous with their food. But, as with most things in life, there is a third path.

GET IN MY FACE.

Deva Restaurant does a style of food closer to traditional Thai cooking: laap, spicy geng som, curries, fried holy basil dishes, only without the fish sauce or blaa rah (fermented fish paste). The cooks wouldn't tell me what they used in place of the fish sauce, but it tastes awfully similar to light soy sauce mixed with mushroom soy sauce. Whatever the secret ingredient, Deva does it up right.

Open for breakfast and lunch (and an early dinner), Deva has both aahaan sang tham (dishes cooked to order) and aahaan kap khao (pre-prepared dishes ready to be served with rice). The kap khao dishes are fun because you can see exactly what's on offer, and the dishes change daily. On your correspondent's last visit, offerings included a hot southern orange curry with pumpkin, tofu laap (a chopped salad made of marinated tofu, chopped and seared, and then tossed with fresh shallots, cilantro, toasted pounded rice, chiles, garlic and lime juice, as well as the secret fish sauce replacement -- highly recommended), and fried long stem mushrooms (marinated and then lightly dried before being fried, they are addictive with a satisfyingly chewy texture).

Just the thing for the morning after.

Deva's fruit smoothies (70 baht) are not to miss as well, perfectly refreshing with a shot of ginger juice to make the mouth tingle. Prices are reasonable with dishes from 50 to 85 bah,t and the restaurant is clean and cool on the inside. Deva is located a few minutes' walk from Ploenchit BTS Station in Mahathun Plaza, close to the top of Sukhumvit Rd.

Deva Restaurant
888/57 Mahathun Plaza, Ploenchit Rd
T: 08 1750 9456
Open daily 08:00-18:00

Tags: Deva, vegetarian

Meat pops up when you least expect it in Bangkok. You’ll place an order for vegetarian spring rolls, assured by the bold print on the menu, the waiter, and the manager that they are, indeed, vegetarian. The rolls arrive, looking crispy and inviting. You bite down eagerly and … what’s that you feel? You pause to examine the inside of your roll, where you find a stealthy piece of pork spooning with your vegetables. The vegans, fruitarians, lacto-ovo vegetarians and humanitarians may sentence me to a cage-free death for mixing movements, but below is a sampling of vegetarian, vegan and organic options in Bangkok for the health-conscious and the veg-curious.

Baan Suan Pai Food Court at Banana Family Park

Veggies for all at Banana Park.

Founded by the family that runs Bangkok Printing, Banana Family Park was established to promote the Buddha’s teachings. The complex offers yoga, a free public dharma library, a health food store, a coffee shop and a cafeteria brimming with vegetable splendours. Like Baan Bai Pluu, Banana Family Park (or, affectionately, Banana) fosters a strictly vegetarian lifestyle with Thai and Chinese-style cuisine. Though the steaks and kabobs may look convincingly like meat, I assure you, they are not. Prices are cheap (30-35 baht) and with eight different stalls to choose from, the grub is reliably good. Don’t leave the premises without buying a fresh vegetable roll, which comes pre-packaged in containers for on-the-go eating. To stay true to the name of the establishment, top off your meal with a bite-sized banana muffin for dessert.

17/1 Soi Ari 1 in Baan Ari Compound. Open daily from approximately 06:00-14:00 (Time varies depending on the vendor; some leave food out as late as 18:00.) T: 02 279 7838. BTS Ari.

Sustaina Organic Shop and Restaurant

The seasoned seaweed and dried fish flakes fun-pack.

After finding a lonesome sweet potato sprouting in his summer palace, the King decided to create the royal project to promote sustainable agriculture and organic farming. Sustaina Organic Shop and Restaurant has followed suit, with a fully-stocked produce market and Japanese-influenced cuisine, using locally-grown fruits vegetables from Harmony Life Organic Farm in Nakhon Ratchsima and natural seafood. The space, with white walls, crisp borders, and fruit wrapped individually, feels pure – a far cry from contaminated fruit that can be sold on street.

Despite the strict adherence to a micro-organic system in growing all produce, the restaurant manages to have a wide range of options, such as macrobiotic tofu and tomato salad, curry with tofu steak and homemade spaghetti with vegetables (150-280 baht per main). If you like the food, head downstairs to the market to take home organic fruit sherbet (22 baht), pumpkin pudding (20 baht), or a bottle of enzyme drink for your next dinner party (1,200 baht, and said to help with “bodily functions”).

1/40 Sukhumvit 39. Open daily for lunch 11:30-14:30 and dinner 17:30-20:45. T: 02 258 7516. BTS Phrom Phong.

Rasayana Retreat: Living Food Café

It's alive!

Offering yoga, pilates, spa treatments, detoxification and colon hydrotherapy (if anyone is looking!), Rasayana Retreat is an urban haven for zen-seeking tourists and expats. In a city that deep-fries morning glory, Living Food Café offers flaxseed pizza, cabbage rolls and spaghetti and nut balls (I kid you not), refusing to cook anything above 42 degrees Celsius or use meat, wheat, dairy, processed, or pasteurised products. The food may feel naked on your plate, and seem a bit overpriced for the portions (130-180 baht per main), but you pay for fresh vegetables washed in reverse osmosis water and sheltered from the Bangkok heat. I was wary when I saw an entire page devoted to different dressings on the menu, but I realised after my meal that the beauty of the food is in its delicate flavour. Without the safety of an oven or a stick of butter, Living Food Café relies solely on the taste of the ingredients, and really, they are enough.

57 Soi Prom-Mitr, Sukhumvit 39. Open daily 10:00-20:00. T: 02 662 4803-5. BTS Phrom Phong.

Tags: organic, pork, royal project, spring rolls, sustainable, vegan, vegetarian

Real vegetarian food in Bangkok can be hard to find. Lurking behind every plate of Chinese kale or mound of vegetable fried rice are vegetarian-eating's ninja assassins: fish sauce and oyster sauce (and sometimes, inexplicably in a "vegetarian" dish, fried slices of pork belly), which makes the food at BP Vegetarian all the more of a treat. BP serves aahaan jeh, or food that follows the Buddhist vegetarian guidelines.

Inside: Pure vegetarian ingredients

Like most Thai Buddhists stray from the strict conventions laid down by Lord Buddha, so does BP stray from the rules of Buddhist cooking a bit, but never about meat or seafood products: this is pure veg. Cooking strictly by the Buddha's rules eliminates both garlic and onions from food. It's an interesting comparison to South Indian vegetarian food's focus on coconut milk and curry spices; aahaan jeh uses lots of tofu and seitan (a fermented preparation of wheat gluten) to satisfy the eater.

Many dishes will be similar to Thai-Chinese preparations already familiar to meat eaters, like a dry red curry similar to Penang but with firm, fried tofu chunks in place of chicken or beef. Many of the curries are on display, making ordering easy. A vegetarian version of pad see ew is amazing -- the rice noodles just tender, chunks of tempeh are marinated and then crisped in the wok, and the kale cooked to perfection with the unexpected addition of toasted black and white sesame seeds.

BP Vegetarian also features bao, which are wrapped, steamed buns filled with both sweet and savoury fillings. Wash your meal down with a variety of teas or infusions -- the butterfly pea juice, while having a laughable name, is a delicious and refreshing brilliant blue infusion with a nice balance of sweet and sour.

BP Vegetarian is located at Suan Pluu 8 on the south side of Sathorn Road. Walk down Suan Pluu from Sathorn and turn left onto Suan Pluu Soi 8. BP Restaurant will be on the right-hand side before the first small alley. Open 06:00-15:00 daily. Mains from 60 baht. Limited English, enthusiastically spoken.

View Baan Bai Pluu in a larger map.

Tags: vegetarian