Best Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants in Charlottesville
Charlottesville, Virginia — updated August 21, 2026
Four places in Charlottesville where the whole menu is plant-based, plus what to do when only half your table is.
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Charlottesville has four restaurants where you can order anything on the menu without checking. That is a small number for a town this size, and it means the useful version of this guide is not a ranking so much as a schedule: two of the four keep short daytime hours, and one is only open three days a week.
Botanical Plant-Based Fare
The best of them, and the only one that works for dinner. Botanical is fully plant-based at 421 E Main Street, holds a 4.9 across 372 reviews, and most of the menu is either gluten-free or has a gluten-free version on request, which makes it the safest booking in town for a table with several restrictions.
Open Tuesday 9 to 3, Wednesday and Thursday 9 to 8, Friday and Saturday 9 to 9, Sunday 9 to 3, and closed Mondays. Happy hour runs Wednesday to Friday, 4 to 6.
The Juice Laundry
Charlottesville's original all-organic juice and smoothie bar, now at three locations, and the one entry here that is open early seven days a week. It opens at 8am daily, which makes it the default plant-based breakfast in a town where the others do not start until 9 or 10.
Note there are multiple branches with different closing times — the Preston location runs 8 to 6 on weekdays and 8 to 3 at weekends. Our own records briefly listed two of the branches as separate restaurants, which is now fixed.
FARMacy Café
A weekday lunch counter rather than a restaurant, and the strongest of the four on breakfast. The breakfast burrito is $12.75, breakfast tacos start at $11.75, and there is a keto breakfast at $13.75. It carries a 4.9 across 79 reviews.
The catch is the hours: Monday to Thursday 10 to 3, Friday 10 to 2, closed Saturday and Sunday. It is a workday option only.
Vegan Comforts Soul Food
The most distinctive cooking on this list and the hardest to actually get to. Vegan Comforts does comfort and soul food with no animal products at all, out of 204 E Market Street. Barbecue runs Friday and Saturday only, and there is a three-for-$9 deal on Tuesdays.
Open 11 to 3 on the days it opens, which is generally Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Check before you go — they post the week's hours rather than keeping fixed ones. Call (434) 260-0073.
When only half the table is vegetarian
None of the above is the answer for a mixed group at 8pm. Bang! on the downtown mall is, and it carries a 4.4 across 475 reviews. It is not a vegetarian restaurant and this guide does not pretend otherwise, but it is open nightly at 5 and has enough on the menu to feed someone who does not eat meat properly rather than apologetically.
What we left off
The previous version of this guide recommended Bangkok Zone Thai - Mexican, which has closed, and listed The Juice Laundry twice as though two branches were two restaurants. It also included Fig and Bang! as if they were vegetarian restaurants. They are good restaurants that serve vegetarians; that is a different claim.