kin restaurant fitzrovia

Kin, Fitzrovia: A brilliant neighbourhood restaurant that just happens to be vegan

15 Jan 2025 | Updated on: 17 Jan 2025 | By Zoe Gunn

Come for Veganuary, return for the inventive food and nothing-bad-can-happen-here ambience

First things first. Kin is an entirely plant-based restaurant. Still with me? Good, then you’re a diner open-minded enough not to immediately dismiss any menu that doesn’t contain generous hunks of meat.

I am not plant-based myself. Yet this attitude towards vegan food has always baffled me. Yes, there is undoubtedly an art to cooking a great steak and fish can be notoriously delicate, but ask any chef worth their Gaggenau stove why restaurant food tastes so much better than anything you can cook at home and they’ll tell you three things: butter, cream, salt. When two of the three are off the table – and your business relies on luring back return customers with genuinely delicious food – the result is often some of the most inventive, unusual and exciting cooking out there.

kin exterior
All images: A Dash and Splash

And yet Kin, which opened in December on a charming corner of Fitzrovia, just far enough away to forget about the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, remains one of only a handful of truly plant-based restaurants in the capital. While spots like Notting Hill’s Holy Carrot, Soho’s Gauthier and Borough’s Mallow are thriving on the growing plant-based population (currently standing at around 2.5 million people in the UK), so ingrained are our carnivorous preferences when it comes to dining out that in 2021 Claridge’s famously parted ways with lauded chef Daniel Humm over his wish to open a vegan eatery at the hotel.

All of which is to say that, even opening just in time for Veganuary, Kin is likely facing something of an uphill battle – or at least it would be if it didn’t have savvy co-founders Reza and Mohammed Malekzadeh behind it. The Malekzadehs, you see, are not ones to rush in all guns (and bank accounts) blazing. Also proprietors of Marylebone’s (non-vegan) Persian restaurant Naroon, the pair have been operating the popular plant-based Kin Café next door since 2014, which means Kin the restaurant comes with both a proof of concept and loyal fan base baked in. Smart.

kin restaurant interior

Behind the pots and pans is executive chef Shayan Shams who, being equally savvy, has created a menu that neither shouts about its plant-based virtues nor attempts to disguise them with meat alternatives. Instead, dishes, divided into appetisers, small plates and large plates, simply treat vegetables very, very well.

Focusing on flavour, rather than pigeon-holing itself into any particular cuisine, much care is taken over texture, sauces and accompaniments. Menus are seasonal and change regularly but, on my visit, the two stars of the show were a sticky cashew tofu (not something I ever thought I would be saying after a particularly hideous introduction to the protein courtesy of a Yo! Sushi conveyor belt) and the house style aubergine. Both were fried to a pleasing crunch and bathed in puddles of satisfyingly thick and flavourful sauces that demanded the bowl be wiped clean.

kin restaurant tofu

Mains are generous and hearty and while, yes, the obligatory cauliflower streak does make an appearance, there’s much to admire among the concise offering. My courgette and pistachio spaghetti came as a heaving bowl of silky carbs dressed in an indulgently creamy sauce and finished with vegan burrata (tastes just like the real thing – don’t ask me how they do it, I don’t care) while my companion’s gnocchi and tomato was hefty deep-fried pucks of potato-y goodness with the vegetable pressed into the service of a relish, espuma and panko-crusted disks. If your reservation about vegan food is being left hungry, that won’t be an issue at Kin.

Food aside, Kin is also simply a really rather lovely place to have dinner. Yes, the space is what a real estate agent might optimistically describe as ‘intimate’, but its 32 covers are spaced far enough apart for privacy and, on the frigid January evening I visited, the inviting glow emitting from its picture windows and softly lit sage interiors was practically magnetic. No, I wouldn’t book here for a raucous celebration, but if you’re looking to impress a foodie on a date night, I can think of few more ambient spots.

kin restaurant spaghetti

There are many reasons to consider a more plant-based lifestyle – the environment and your health chiefly among them – but also simply because rejecting it means you’re missing out on some seriously great food. Will Kin be the catalyst for a vegan revolution? Probably not, but it’s a good place to start.

Visit kinlondon.com

Read more: The best restaurants in Soho