Vegan Food Across the Village

A recipe can carry a home across an ocean. In the Village, those journeys find their way into storefront kitchens and onto a griddle at the edge of Washington Square Park. Sitting down to eat gives us another way to get to know the people who make these streets their own.

Village Preservation has previously explored vegan food and the local businesses serving it. Here, we take a closer look at three spots, one a food cart near Washington Square, and restaurants in Greenwich Village and the East Village. Their menus move from South Indian dosas to Sichuan noodles and French cooking, with plenty of reasons to bring an appetite.

NY Dosas Food Cart, near Washington Square

_{Washington Square South near Sullivan Street}

On the southern edge of Washington Square Park, NY Dosas has built a lasting neighborhood presence on wheels. Thiru Kumar, born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, started the cart in 2001. Known to regulars as the Dosa Man, he serves vegan South Indian food from a small workspace beside one of the Village’s great gathering places.

The menu begins with rice-and-lentil crepes. The masala dosa holds a potato filling, while the Special Pondicherry adds vegetables. Lunch comes with sambar, a lentil and vegetable soup, and coconut chutney. For something smaller, there are samosas or vegan drumsticks made from soy protein on sugarcane sticks.

The setting deserves some of your afternoon. This is the park where folk musicians fought for the right to sing in April 1961, and where public life has long unfolded within earshot of strangers. Take your lunch to a bench and give yourself permission to linger. A meal can be a small reason to spend more time in a place worth knowing.

Start with: The masala dosa or Special Pondicherry, with sambar and coconut chutney.

Spicy Moon in the East Village

_{328 East 6th Street, between First and Second Avenues}

At Spicy Moon’s East Village location, the menu turns toward Sichuan cooking. Village Preservation included the then-new vegan restaurant in its February 2019 roundup of local Chinese restaurants, drawing attention to its chili wontons and dan dan noodles. Both remain on the posted menu today.

The current East Village menu describes dan dan noodles with chili oil, sweet soy sauce, and sesame paste. Mapo tofu brings soft tofu together with leeks and Sichuan peppercorns in a chili gravy. Vegetable wontons hold glass noodles, wood ear mushrooms, and spiced tofu beneath their wrappers.

There is room to build a meal around vegetables, too. String beans come with garlic, dried peppers, and fermented vegetables. The dry pot combines vegetables and mushrooms with tofu skin and fried tofu in a spicy sauce. The choices give a table plenty to pass around, with sesame, garlic, and chili carrying the conversation from plate to plate.

For an evening with friends, order a few dishes to share. Let dinner be an occasion to sit together for a while before returning to the street.

Start with: Dan dan noodles and vegetable wontons in chili oil, adding mapo tofu for a fuller meal.

Délice and Sarrasin in Greenwich Village

178 West Houston Street, with the entrance on Bedford Street

At 178 West Houston Street, with its entrance on Bedford Street, Délice & Sarrasin gives French cooking another way to tell its story. The family-run restaurant moved from 20 Christopher Street in June 2023. Under chef Yvette Caron, its entirely vegan menu carries familiar dishes into a kitchen where plants do the work.

Délice de Bernay, the bakery inside the restaurant, gives the address a second rhythm. Its bakery menu ranges from vegan butter croissants and chocolate-filled chocolatines to almond croissants, macarons, and opera cake. Savory choices include quiche and truffled croque monsieur.

Macarons come in flavors including rose, lavender, passion fruit, and lemon, while the opera cake layers oat sponge, coffee buttercream, and dark chocolate ganache into a familiar French dessert. There is room here for an unhurried meal, but also for the smaller pleasure of choosing a pastry and carrying something sweet into the day.

The neighborhood has earlier French connections, too. In the nineteenth century, French immigrants lived south of Washington Square in an area known as the Quartier Français. Délice & Sarrasin belongs to a different chapter, one in which familiar recipes make space for changing ways of eating. That conversation between inheritance and invention feels at home in the Village.

It also sits within the neighborhood’s broader story of vegan dining and local businesses. A restaurant gives that story a physical address: somewhere to meet, return, and make an ordinary afternoon worth remembering.

The restaurant currently lists daily hours of 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., while the bakery opens daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Come for dinner, or begin with a croissant. Either way, leave yourself a little time to sit.