Leave the peanut butter sandwiches and protein bars at home. These vegan-friendly luxury resorts offer everything you need.
Resorts are a place to escape. These highly curated, meticulously designed experiences should lift the everyday burdens of life off your shoulders and allow you to be free—free of work obligations, free of the everyday slog, and free to enjoy all this luxurious bubble has to offer, including the food.
While everyone can appreciate soft, sandy beaches or get a thrill from a tour-guided mountain bike ride through the forest, not all can partake in typical resort food. When you’re vegan and your choices are limited to fresh fruit, grilled vegetables, and black coffee, reality intervenes in your otherwise picturesque getaway. But good news: these vegan-friendly resorts offer plenty of five-star plant-based options so you can fully immerse yourself in living the high life, if only for a few days. But first, let’s take a look at how the fine dining scene has changed over the last few years.
The growth of high-end vegan cuisine
Vegan fine dining started with a few pioneering chef entrepreneurs. We saw it bloom early in the now-shuttered (and topic of the Bad Vegan documentary) Pure Food & Wine in New York, followed by the still-standing novel concepts like Matthew Kenney’s Plant Food & Wine in Venice, CA; Tal Ronnen’s Crossroads in Hollywood (now in Las Vegas, NV and Calabasas, CA); and Steve Salm’s Planta in Miami, among a few others.
After the success of these polished restaurants, all clearly attracting more than just a vegan clientele, we began to see vegan cuisine in high-end hotel restaurants.
Las Vegas’ The Wynn Encore now offers at least one plant-based option in every single of its dining venues, and the Aria in Vegas has followed suit. Thanks to consultants like chefs Leslie Durso and Matthew Kenney, the Four Seasons is another high-end hotel chain making efforts to offer plenty of plant-based menu items that appeal to a wide variety of travelers, not just vegans.
Finally, while not a hotel, we cannot omit the rebirth of Eleven Madison Park following the global pandemic. The emblematic New York City restaurant reopened with a vegan menu, eschewing many of the animal products it relied upon pre-pandemic. Despite, or perhaps because of this dramatic pivot, the restaurant retained its three Michelin stars in 2022.
Planning a vegan vaction? Here’s how to find a resort
When looking for a vegan-friendly resort, it’s best to start with wellness-centered companies.
Many of the resorts listed below are meant to be centers of health and wellness transformation, and a robust plant-based food program is integral to this mission. Club Med is a recent example. The 72-year-old business that spans across Mexico and the Caribbean employed chef Chole Coscarelli to create vegan dishes for all of its menus.
Other hotels may not be exclusively wellness-centered but offer wellness programming, like The Peninsula Beverly Hills or The Four Seasons. There’s an advantage to choosing a resort based on its commitment to healing: it’s very likely to have an incredible spa!
11. Rosewood Miramar Beach
Laid-back, coastal cool meets refined resort at this Santa Barbara, CA resort. The beachfront property offers everything you could want from a vacation perspective: posh accommodations, beach access, gorgeous pools, lawn games (on perfectly manicured grounds), a luxury spa, and vegan options on every menu. For a completely curated dining experience, make your reservations at Caruso’s. The Southern Italian-inspired restaurant provides a four-course vegan prix-fixe menu, and yes, that includes a decadent dessert (spoiler alert: it’s peanut butter chocolate mousse). While a great getaway for California residents, it’s also an option to consider for all looking at vegan-friendly wedding venues.
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