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If you ask people about their favorite holiday, they’ll probably say Christmas, Easter or Halloween. Mine is Lent. Not because I’m particularly religious, but because it’s the one time of year when being vegan in Armenia stops feeling like an inconvenience and starts feeling almost normal.

If you’re a vegetarian in Armenia—or, worse, vegan—you know the routine. You sit down at a restaurant with friends or family, open the menu and instinctively flip to the first few pages. That’s where your choices usually begin and end:

Salads.

And not even the fancy ones vegetarians might get—Greek salad, Caprese, maybe a Caesar without the chicken (which was originally made without chicken) but, if you’re lucky, you can also find falafel, hummus, or arrabiata pasta.

Don’t get me wrong: I love falafel. But believe it or not, vegans don’t just eat salads. And they don’t want to rotate between hummus, falafel, and the one or two available vegan pastas every time they go out. 

For many years, that has been the reality of dining in Armenia as a vegan. Somewhere along the way, many people came to believe that vegan food is just vegetables on a plate. But people are vegan for many reasons—health related (lactose intolerance or meat allergies like Alpha-Gal Syndrome), religious, or environmental. Whatever the reason, vegans should have a variety of options to choose from, not just a bowl of salad.

In Armenia, where khorovadz is practically a national love language, telling someone you don’t eat meat is often met with confusion. 

However, over the past few years, Armenia’s plant-based dining scene has started to quietly grow. A small number of diners and cafes now offer vegan menus, with both savory and sweet dishes. 

This shift is noticeable enough that HappyCow, a global platform similar to TripAdvisor’s dining section, now features a number of plant-based restaurants in Armenia. These include Future Diner, 2022_Bak, Ecospace, and Kruzhok. Sweet and bakery spots include 2022_place and SweetLi by Lilit.

In Armenia, meals are where birthdays are celebrated, political debates and disagreements unfold, and guests are welcomed. Sitting around the table and sharing dishes is part of the culture. But that experience can change when one person can’t participate in the same way as everyone else. While friends pass around plates of khorovadz and cheese-filled appetizers, the vegan guest is often left with a salad and a basket of bread. The problem, then, is both a lack of options and the feeling of being excluded from an experience meant to bring people together. That’s why the rise of vegan-friendly restaurants matters.

Although Armenia’s plant-based dining scene is still small, it’s worth exploring. Future Diner, on Mashtots Avenue, is one of its standouts. Up a short flight of stairs, visitors are welcomed into a cozy space where the walls are lined with portraits of well-known vegan celebrities and Tom & Jerry plays on the TV.

The restaurant began with a simple problem. After moving from Lebanon to Armenia, Raffi Nercessian, the founder of Future Diner and a vegan himself, found it difficult to find plant-based meals. “I wanted a place for me to eat,” says Raffi. Instead of waiting for options to appear, he decided to create one himself. He started cooking at home and inviting friends over to share meals. That soon turned into catering at festivals, where locals had the chance to try the plant-based food he made. “The response was positive,” he says. “People kept telling me to open my own place.”

So, he decided to take a leap. The diner started in a backyard garage with just three tables, one outside and two inside, and eventually became the Future Diner we know today.

Even in the new space, nearly everything on the menu is still prepared by Raffi, much of it the result of kitchen experiments. “Making vegan mayo was my biggest accomplishment. I realized if I could make vegan mayo, I could make anything,” he explains.

Through the experimentation, the diner now offers more than 60 dishes, ranging from healthy, nutritious meals to indulgent comfort food. Rather than limiting vegan cuisine to salads or “healthy” options, it reflects the same variety you’d find at a traditional diner.

Many of the dishes are plant-based versions of familiar Armenian and Middle Eastern foods, as well as classics from international cuisine. Their vegan lahmajun, which they call Soymajo, is one of their signature items, alongside chicken and meat shawarma made with soy.

“We use the same ingredients as the traditional chicken and meat shawarma,” says Sevag Apelian, a front-house worker at Future Diner and a friend of Raffi. “But instead of chicken and meat, we use soy chunks.”

For Sevag, the goal was never to serve vegan food specifically; it was to serve good food. “Instead of saying let’s go have vegan food, people say, let’s go have good food. And that’s what’s really important to hear.”

Sevag notes that most customers who visit the diner are not vegan. Often, a group comes because one of their friends is vegan, and everyone at the table ends up enjoying the food. The diner also gets busy during Lent. “For many of them, the visit doesn’t end with Lent,” Sevag says, “After fasting, they return because they missed our food.”

One of the most common questions the team receives is where vegans get their protein and nutrients. They point to soy, which is naturally high in protein, as well as a wide variety of nutrient-rich plant-based foods on the menu, such as lentils, beans, and chickpeas. 

When it comes to sourcing ingredients, most of what they use is made in-house, while the rest comes from EcoJan, a vegan supermarket on Vardanants Street. In recent months, access to vegan food has also improved. 

“Around six or seven months ago, Armenian supermarkets began stocking a wider range of imported vegan products,” says Raffi. “This has made it much easier too.”

Future Diner also offers vegan desserts, including tiramisu, ice cream, and homemade snickers bars. But if you have a sweet tooth, Armenia also has a cafe dedicated entirely to plant-based desserts. 

Located on Sayat-Nova Avenue, SweetLi by Lilit offers an extensive selection of plant-based desserts, many of which are also gluten-free and sugar-free. Founder, Lilit Hovhannisyan opened the cafe in 2019 after becoming increasingly aware of the connection between nutrition and overall well-being. “I realized that desserts could be both delicious and nourishing without relying on refined sugar, gluten, or animal products,” she says.

Her vision extended beyond healthy eating. She set out to prove that plant-based desserts could appeal to everyone, not just those with dietary restrictions. Judging by her returning customers, many come back for the flavor, not because the desserts happen to be vegan.

Creating vegan desserts can be more challenging than preparing meals, since substituting butter, eggs, and cream is often more complex. But Lilit enjoys the creative process of experimenting with new flavors, including the bakery’s homemade vegan honey. “We make our own vegan honey alternative using sea buckthorn, rose and lavender,” she says. “Together, they create delicate floral notes that remind people of honey in a completely natural way.”

Alongside these original creations, the bakery also offers vegan versions of classic desserts like baklava, honey cake, halva, and kozinaki, and plans to continue expanding the menu. 

While many customers seek out healthier desserts, others simply come for something delicious. And for those with multiple dietary restrictions, the cafe goes a step further, creating custom desserts from scratch so everyone can enjoy a sweet treat.

For Lilit, what matters most is for everyone to leave having enjoyed a dessert and feeling good afterward. 

While dedicated plant-based cafes and diners have made it easier for people with vegan diets to enjoy a good meal, many mainstream restaurants offer a few plant-based options. As a result, vegans often have to choose between limiting what they can eat and suggesting restaurants that cater specifically to them. Still, vegan restaurants are proving that these meals can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of diet.

Gacia Injeyan, a regular at Future Diner who is not vegan, says she first visited because of a vegan friend. What began as a way to accommodate someone else’s diet became a place she returned to for the food itself. “My favorite sandwich from Future Diner is actually a Philly-style sandwich,” she says, “which is usually made with cheese.”

For Arpi Shahinyan, who has followed a vegetarian diet since 2018, the issue is less about finding fully vegetarian restaurants and more about having options wherever friends choose to eat. “Most restaurants don’t offer vegetarian or vegan-friendly meals,” she says. “When you’re with your friends, you don’t choose places just because they’re vegan or vegetarian.” She believes that adding even a few well-made plant-based dishes to menus would make dining out far more inclusive, so everyone at the table can enjoy a good meal together.

For Anahit Nagdalyan, who was a vegetarian for two years before becoming vegan in 2019, the changes over the past few years have been remarkable. She remembers the excitement of seeing plant-based milk and tofu appear in supermarkets for the first time. “Before that, I was basically living off pasta and potatoes because I didn’t know where to eat,” she says. 

Today, there are far more places where people can enjoy a satisfying vegan meal. Anahit also credits Armenia’s annual Lent season. “Many great dishes and desserts first appear during Lent and then stay on the menu permanently,” she says. “Once businesses see how popular they are during the fasting period, they decide to keep them.” 

Vegan food is no longer defined only by what it leaves out. Increasingly, it is being recognized for what it offers: good food, regardless of whether someone follows a plant-based diet. People simply want to enjoy a good meal with friends and family.

Go on a journey through Armenia’s landscapes and kitchens, its memories and quiet rituals in this month’s issue of SALT. From vegan dining and forgotten recipes to hiking trails and nostalgic reflections, these stories invite us to slow down and appreciate the unexpected.