I travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia every couple of months and one of the reasons I love it so much is because of the incredible food. KL is also a wonderful destination for vegetarians and vegans with numerous excellent vegetarian restaurants around the city. If you’re a vegetarian or vegan or, like me, just love healthy veggie food you’ll be thrilled with Kuala Lumpur, it has some of the best vegetarian restaurants in south east Asia.
Annalakshmi Indian Vegetarian Restaurant – A thoroughly unique vegetarian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur is Annalakshmi, which was rated the best veggie restaurant in KL a few years ago. It’s a Hiindu restaurant run on the principal that you donate what you can afford or what you think the meal is worth so, if you’re on a budget, getting a cheap meal is easy at Annalakshmi.
There’s a choice of ordering from the a la carte menu or choosing the all-you-can eat buffet, which would be my recommendation. With grilled vegetables,veggie curries, tofu dishes, chapattis, chick peas, vegetable samosas, brown rice, pratas, puris – you name it Annalakshmi has it on their massive buffet and it’s all delicious.
It’s also a mellow restaurant with calming Indian music playing and friendly, helpful staff. Be warned, you’ll probably end up eating way more food here than you plan on so I’d recommend dinner rather than lunch. Then that way you can roll back to your hotel and relax when you’re done.
Chayo Tea Cafe – A wonderful vegetarian restaurant that serves veggie and vegan options, Chayo Tea Cafe has not only delicious organic vegetarian food, it’s cheap too.
At Chayo, they concentrate on set meals with a meal plus drink at extremely affordable prices. For breakfast, why not try their French toast set with coffee for only 6.50 ringgit (around $2.10) or, for lunch, the North Indian Meal Set is delicious – a vegetarian curry, veggie side dish, Indian salad, yoghurt and rice or a chapati and coffee – for only 6 ringgit ($1.95).
Along with the Indian food, Chayo Tea Cafe also serves several local Malay dishes and don’t forget the other thing they’re famous for – tea. There’s a huge variety of everything from herbal teas to green teas, spice tea, lassi tea drinks – if you love tea and vegetarian food, you’re on to a winner here.
Gopala Vegetarian Restaurant – I discovered this vegetarian restaurant after seeing it featured on the Travel Channel and I’m happy I did.
At Gopala, you’ll find Indian, Chinese, Malay and Thai dishes, all looking like normal, the only difference being they’re 100% vegetarian. Owned and operated (and he cooks!) by the owner who is a past newspaper employee, there’s a massive choice of vegetarian foods, much of it in sets.
Try the vegetarian satay, a specialty everybody seems to know about, or one of their Thai noodle dishes or their Indian Ravi Tosai. Their Malaysian Redang is great too.
The even better thing about Gopala, other than the veggie and vegan food, is the price. You can eat a huge amount here and still leave having spent less than $7. You can’t beat that.
More Information:
Annalakshmi Indian Vegetarian Restaurant
Chayo Tea Cafe
Gopala Vegetarian Restaurant (nice review and photos)
