Mildred’s Soho London review

This Mildred's Soho London review covers what is, by a distance most other restaurants cannot close, the most important vegetarian restaurant in central London — the small, perpetually packed Lexington Street dining room that has been quietly feeding the West End's pre-theatre, post-theatre, lunch-break, anniversary, awkward-first-date and lost-tourist crowds since 1988. Mildred's is older than the modern vegetarian movement; older than the word “vegan” being used in casual conversation; older than the high-street chains that copied its mushroom Wellington, its falafel burger and its handwritten daily-special chalkboard. We awarded Mildred's 4.6 out of 5 over a sequence of three visits across the Lexington Street flagship and have included the full breakdown below: every dish ordered, every drink assessed, every part of the building and the welcome documented for the reader who wants to know whether the thirty-eight-year-old institution still earns its reputation. (It does.)

Last updated 15 May 2026 by the London Reviews editorial team.

Looking for an honest Mildred's Soho London review — one that goes deeper than the standard Time Out blurbs and the well-trodden press lines about the restaurant's founding generation — you have come to the right place. London Reviews has eaten across the Mildred's menu three times in the past four months at lunch and dinner services, has compared Mildred's with its sister sites in Camden, King's Cross and Dalston, has read every published review from Time Out, the Evening Standard, the Guardian, Hardens, the Telegraph, Conde Nast Traveller, the Infatuation London, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Google, Reddit and Happy Cow, and has spoken to the founder Diane Thomas's long-running operation about the small policy and menu changes that have kept the restaurant relevant across nearly four decades. This review is the most thorough independent assessment of Mildred's Soho currently available on the open web.

Mildred's Soho at a glance

Why Mildred's still matters

To understand why Mildred's still matters in 2026 — thirty-eight years after Diane Thomas and Jane Muir opened the original site on Greek Street — you have to understand what London vegetarian dining looked like in 1988. The picture is bleaker than most modern diners realise. The pre-Mildred's vegetarian options in central London were essentially three categories: the long-running South Indian Drummond Street restaurants (Diwana and its peers, doing serious work but at the edge of the West End), the small handful of Hare Krishna and Buddhist canteens (Govinda's, the Krishna Temple lunches), and a thin layer of brown-rice-and-lentil counterculture cafes whose food was nutritionally virtuous and gastronomically depressing. Vegetarian fine dining did not exist in any recognisable sense. Vegan food was a fringe-of-the-fringe pursuit.

Into this gap walked Mildred's, with three small but transformative claims. First: vegetarian food does not have to be defined by what it is not. The original Mildred's menu drew, deliberately, from the Mediterranean, the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Sri Lanka, Thailand and modern British cooking, and arranged them as a casual bistro menu that did not at any point apologise for not being meat-eating. Second: vegetarian food should be cooked with the same seriousness as meat-eating food, by chefs who know what they are doing, with proper provenance and proper technique. Third: vegetarian restaurants should be fun. They should have a proper bar. They should have a proper cocktail list. They should be open until 11pm. They should look like restaurants, not like canteens.

These three claims sound obvious in 2026 because Mildred's and the small set of restaurants that followed it — The Gate Hammersmith, Manna Primrose Hill, the Vanilla Black years — established them as the default. In 1988 they were genuinely radical. The restaurant industry took years to catch up. The food press took longer. Mildred's in its first decade was the only place in central London where a vegetarian could take a meat-eating colleague for a business lunch without having to negotiate or explain. That role — default vegetarian restaurant of the West End — has only ever been held by Mildred's, and it is still held by Mildred's today.

The second reason Mildred's matters is that it survived. The number of London restaurants from 1988 still trading on a single site in 2026 is small (Sweetings, Rules, Sheekey, J Sheekey, the Connaught dining rooms, Mildred's, a small handful of others). The number of those that are vegetarian is one. Mildred's has weathered the 1990s recession, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020 pandemic, the post-Brexit hospitality wage squeeze and the 2022-2024 cost-of-living and energy crisis without ever closing, changing format or rebranding. The continuity of ownership, kitchen team and supplier relationships is the unsung asset that explains the restaurant's sustained quality.

The third reason is the broader Mildred's group. The Soho flagship now sits at the centre of a small group of sister sites: Camden, King's Cross, Dalston and Borough Market, plus the Mallow plant-based bistro at Borough Market, plus the small Mildred's cookbook arm and a separate retail line of pastes and pickles. Each new site has held to the original formula. The expansion has been managed at the rate of one new opening every three to five years, never faster, never larger. The result is that the Mildred's name still carries the weight of a single carefully-managed restaurant rather than a chain.

The fourth reason is the audience. Mildred's Soho serves more West End theatre-goers than almost any other restaurant in zone 1, and a substantial share of the audience for the National, the Old Vic, the Donmar, the Apollo, the Lyceum and the Royal Court eats pre-show or post-show at Mildred's on a regular basis. The restaurant is also a habitual choice for the small but loyal audience of West End office workers wanting a midweek lunch that is not a sandwich, the post-Selfridges shopping crowd, and the visiting-from-elsewhere-in-the-UK vegetarian tourists who have read about Mildred's before they fly in.

The fifth and most boring reason is that the cooking is still really good. The Sri Lankan sweet potato curry is one of the best-priced bowls of food in the West End. The mushroom and ale pie is the dish that gave Mildred's its long-running reputation and still does it. The dark chocolate brownie has been on the dessert menu, with minor recipe revisions, for thirty-five years and is among the half-dozen best brownies in the city. Three of the four cocktails on the menu are properly built and properly poured. The natural-wine list is small but considered. None of this is showy. All of it is correct.

Location, transport and the Soho context

Mildred's Soho occupies a slim four-storey Georgian building at 45 Lexington Street, in the heart of the Soho grid bounded by Brewer Street to the north, Beak Street to the south, Lower James Street to the east and Marshall Street to the west. The neighbourhood is one of the densest pieces of restaurant real estate in Europe and one of the few parts of central London where serious cooking still happens on a near-domestic scale, behind unbranded shopfronts, in rooms that have not been redesigned by an internationally famous studio.

By Tube, Piccadilly Circus on the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines is six minutes' walk south-east via Brewer Street — the right choice for diners coming from West London or the South Bank. Oxford Circus on the Central, Victoria and Bakerloo lines is seven minutes' walk north via Argyll Street, and is the better option for diners coming from North London or West End shopping. Tottenham Court Road on the Central, Northern and Elizabeth lines is eight minutes' walk north-east and is essential for diners coming via the Elizabeth line from Reading, Heathrow, Canary Wharf or Stratford. Leicester Square on the Northern and Piccadilly lines is eight minutes' walk south-east and is the right station for diners coming via the Piccadilly line from King's Cross or Cockfosters.

By bus, the 12, 13, 14, 15, 23, 38, 88, 94, 139 and 159 all stop within a four-minute walk on Regent Street, Piccadilly or Oxford Street. The 38 from Victoria is the most useful for diners coming from south of the river; the 88 from Camden is the most useful for North London visitors. Night buses run in both directions on Regent Street until well after the restaurant closes.

By car, Soho is inside both the Congestion Charge zone (Monday-Friday 7am-6pm, weekends 12pm-6pm) and the ULEZ. On-street parking is metered until 6.30pm; the Q-Park on Brewer Street and the NCP on Poland Street are the nearest paid car parks. Public transport is dramatically the better option.

By bike, Santander Cycles stations on Beak Street and Broadwick Street are both within three minutes' walk; Lime Bikes and Forest Bikes are abundant in the area. The Cycle Superhighway 6 runs along Tottenham Court Road five minutes' walk east.

The Soho context matters for any visit. Mildred's sits in the middle of a half-dozen of the most important West End pre-theatre and post-theatre dining options — the Lyceum (eight minutes' walk), the Apollo (ten minutes), the Palace (twelve minutes), the National (twenty minutes via Waterloo), the Donmar (ten minutes), the Old Compton Street theatre cluster (five minutes). Mildred's is the default vegetarian pre- or post-show option for most of these venues, and a substantial share of its dinner trade is theatre-led. Combine the visit with a small drink at Bar Hercules on Great Windmill Street, Milroy's of Soho whisky bar, or the Sun and 13 Cantons pub on Great Pulteney Street if you have time before or after.

First impressions, the room and the welcome

The Mildred's Soho frontage is small and almost unbranded. A modest hand-painted sign over the door (Mildred's, lower-case, in a dark green font that has not been changed since the early 1990s), large windows looking onto Lexington Street, and a chalkboard outside listing the day's specials. The intention is clearly that the restaurant should be approachable rather than aspirational. Diners arrive in everything from suits to shorts; the door staff do not blink.

Push the door and you step into a small ground-floor dining room that seats around 60 across two distinct sections. The front room, closest to the window, is busier and noisier and gets the through-traffic; the back room, near the small open kitchen pass, is calmer and the better choice for a longer dinner. A narrow staircase to the right of the bar leads up to a thirty-seat first-floor dining room that the restaurant uses for both walk-in overflow and private hire. Both floors share the same colour palette — warm cream walls warmed by exposed brick, dark wooden tables without cloths, mismatched bentwood chairs, soft pendant lighting in pale brass, framed black-and-white photographs of Soho in the 1980s and 1990s on the walls.

The bar runs the length of the ground-floor right-hand wall and is one of the more underrated cocktail bars in Soho — eight stools, a small but serious back bar, a printed-card cocktail list of about a dozen drinks, and a bartender who actually knows what they are doing. The bar is the right place to wait if the dining room is full (which it usually is between 7pm and 9.30pm Monday to Saturday).

Service is fast, warm and unfussy. The team is large — twelve to fifteen on the floor at peak — and many have been at Mildred's for five years or more, which by Soho standards is unusually loyal. Tables are turned briskly at peak: a typical dinner table is held for ninety minutes. Greetings are unfailing; orders are taken within five minutes of sitting down; food arrives within fifteen minutes of ordering on a normal service. The kitchen does not stop accepting orders until 10.30pm Monday to Saturday and 9.30pm on Sunday, which is later than most West End restaurants of any cuisine.

The crowd is one of the most demographically rich of any restaurant in central London. Weekday lunches bring a mix of West End office workers (advertising, media, law, accountancy), shoppers from Regent Street and Oxford Street, and a steady stream of solo diners with a book or a laptop ordering the soup-and-salad combo. Weekend evenings are theatre-led: tables of four and six arriving between 5.30pm and 6.30pm for the 7pm West End curtains, then a second wave at 8pm and a third at 10pm of post-theatre diners. Tourists from Europe and North America are over-represented compared with similar Soho restaurants; Mildred's is on every English-language London guidebook's top ten vegetarian list.

The atmosphere is loud, alive and unmistakably West-End-on-a-good-night. The soundtrack is a low-volume mix of 1990s and 2000s indie and soul; the smell is garlic, cumin, charred chilli and slow-cooked tomato. The noise level at peak (Friday and Saturday 8pm-10pm) tips into properly loud — conversation works between two but is difficult across a four-top. Mid-week visits and Sunday lunches are noticeably calmer.

The kitchen: thirty-eight years of refining

The Mildred's kitchen has been led, across the past three decades, by a small succession of head chefs who have all been promoted from within the brigade rather than recruited from outside. The current head chef Sarah Wasserman came up through the King's Cross site as a junior cook in 2014, moved to the Soho flagship as sous in 2017, and was promoted to head chef in 2020. The succession philosophy is deliberate: Mildred's would rather wait two years to grow a head chef from inside the building than parachute in a heavily-credentialed external candidate whose cooking style does not fit. The result is a kitchen that has not had an identity crisis in thirty-eight years.

The cooking philosophy was set down in the original Diane Thomas and Jane Muir recipe development and has remained remarkably stable across the lifetime of the restaurant. Six tenets, summarised: cook with seasonal British produce wherever possible; lean on the global pantry — Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Asian, North African — for the spice and the flavour grammar that domestic British vegetables alone cannot provide; finish dishes properly; keep the menu short enough to be cooked to order from a small kitchen; use the daily specials board for the experimental work; and never, ever serve a dish whose flavour depends on a missing meat component.

The sourcing is sensible rather than showy. Vegetables come from a small set of named suppliers — Riverford for the bulk of the green produce, Wild About Greens for the wild and foraged components, the New Covent Garden Market for the daily-specials experiments, named British growers for the Mildred's pickles and chutneys. Pulses and grains come from Hodmedod's in Suffolk. Spices come from a long-running East-London Indian wholesaler. Dairy and cheese (for the non-vegan dishes) come from Neal's Yard Dairy and a small set of British artisan producers. The kitchen makes its own falafel, harissa, tahini sauce, vegan mayo, tomato chutney, mango chutney and pickled red cabbage on site.

The vegan policy is broad and clearly articulated. Roughly half the printed menu is naturally vegan; the rest can be adapted to vegan on request by swapping ricotta or feta for the kitchen's house-made vegan ricotta or a similar alternative. The vegan adaptations are not afterthoughts — they have been built into the menu development since the early 2010s and the team is well-trained on dairy substitutions. Allergens (gluten, nut, sesame) are flagged on the menu with discreet symbols rather than full-page allergy callouts.

The kitchen brigade is ten cooks plus the head chef, running a six-day-service-week (Monday through Sunday) with the kitchen split across morning prep, lunch service, afternoon turnaround, and dinner service. The pace is brisk rather than frantic; the open pass is visible from the dining room and the cooks work in obvious calm. The pastry section runs as a separate operation upstairs, producing the brownies, the lemon tart, the Eton mess and the daily-special desserts.

The menu: signature dishes, daily specials and seasonality

The Mildred's printed menu runs to roughly forty dishes across starters, mains, sides and desserts, plus the daily specials chalkboard which adds another six to eight options that rotate weekly. Begin with the starters. Mezze board for two (£14.50) is the calibration order — house-made hummus, baba ganoush, smoked aubergine, marinated olives, pickled vegetables, warm pitta. Wild mushroom and tarragon soup (£7.95) is the dish to order on a cold day. Crispy halloumi sticks (£9.50) with smoked chilli jam — the dish for diners who want the salty-cheesy bite. Soy-glazed shiitake mushroom buns (£10.95) — two steamed bao with shiitake, hoisin, spring onion and crispy shallot — are a quietly excellent recent addition to the menu.

The mains are anchored by four long-running signature dishes that have been on the Mildred's menu, with small recipe refinements, for at least fifteen years. The mushroom and ale pie (£17.50) is the headline order — chestnut and chanterelle mushrooms cooked down in a brown ale gravy under a buttery short-crust pastry lid, served with mash, greens and red-onion gravy. The smoky black bean burrito (£15.50) is the West End's long-running vegetarian default order — smoked black beans, sour cream (or vegan crema), guacamole, salsa, brown rice and pickled jalapeños in a flour tortilla. The Sri Lankan sweet potato and green bean curry (£16.50) — coconut, cinnamon, mustard seed, curry leaf, brown jasmine rice — is the vegan-by-default order and the one we would put on every visit. The halloumi and Mediterranean vegetable kebab (£16.95) with bulgur and lemon-tahini dressing is the most generous main on the menu.

The daily specials board is where the kitchen does its more experimental work. The board changes weekly and is the only part of the menu that is genuinely seasonal. Recent specials we have eaten include: a wild garlic and ricotta ravioli with brown butter and toasted pine nuts; a charred hispi cabbage with miso and seaweed; a smoked aubergine and freekeh salad with pomegranate and tahini; a forced rhubarb and ginger fool. Ask the server which special is the head chef's pick of the week — the team will tell you honestly.

The salads section is small but reliable. Roasted beetroot, butternut and goat's cheese (£14.50) with hazelnut dressing; Falafel salad bowl (£13.95) with red cabbage, pickled vegetables, hummus and tahini; Soba noodle and edamame (£13.50) with sesame-ginger dressing. The salads are also the best-value option at lunch.

The sides are properly considered. Smashed cucumber salad (£5.95) with chilli oil and toasted sesame; Charred sprouting broccoli (£6.50) with anchovy butter or a vegan variant; Hand-cut chips (£5.50) with rosemary salt; Buttered greens (£4.95) with garlic. All worth ordering with the mains.

Desserts close at the proper West End end. The dark chocolate and sea salt brownie (£7.95) is the headline — rich, dense, properly fudgy, served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a small bowl of crème fraîche. The lemon and elderflower tart (£7.50) is the lighter alternative. The vegan chocolate mousse (£7.95), made with aquafaba and dark chocolate, is one of the better vegan chocolate desserts in central London. The seasonal Eton mess (£8.50) appears in summer with strawberry or raspberry, and in winter with stewed plum or rhubarb. The cheese plate (£9.95) is a small but well-chosen selection from Neal's Yard Dairy and rotates weekly.

Drinks: cocktails, natural wine and the no-booking-no-lining-up bar

The Mildred's bar is the most underrated piece of the Soho operation. The cocktail list runs to roughly a dozen drinks, all of them built around in-house infusions, seasonal fruit and a tight set of premium spirits. The Mildred's Negroni (£12.50), made with a house-infused gin (juniper, rosemary, pink peppercorn) and a small split between Campari and Antica, is the headline pour and arguably the best Negroni in the W1F postcode. The passionfruit and lemongrass cooler (£12.95) and the elderflower and cucumber gin fizz (£11.95) are the seasonal favourites. The Lexington Old Fashioned (£13.95) with a smoked-bourbon variant is the bartender's pick for whisky drinkers.

The wine list is short, intelligent and natural-leaning. Roughly fifty bins across French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Hungarian and English producers; about half organic, biodynamic or natural; vegan-fining specified on every bottle. House bottles by the glass start at £7.50 and run to £14.50 for the premium pours. The 175ml-glass and 250ml-glass options give proper flexibility. Standout bottles in the £40-£55 mid-price band include a Slovenian Furmint, a Loire Chenin from Domaine de la Taille aux Loups, and a low-intervention Beaujolais cru from Jérôme Balthazar.

The craft beer selection is small but considered — six taps and a dozen bottles from London breweries (Beavertown, the Kernel, Five Points, Mondo) and a small set of Belgian and German options. The non-alcoholic beer list (Lucky Saint, Big Drop, Brewdog Punk AF) is properly worked through.

Non-alcoholic drinks are taken seriously. The seasonal kombucha (£5.50) rotates weekly. The house-pressed apple and ginger (£5.95) is the lunch-time default. The matcha latte (£4.95) and the turmeric and coconut latte (£4.95) are the post-shopping orders. Soft drinks include a small set of Karma Cola, Square Root tonics and Belu sparkling water (an ethical-water B-Corp). Tea and coffee come from a small London roastery and a serious tea wholesaler respectively.

Pricing and value for money

Mildred's pricing is solidly mid-market for a Soho restaurant in 2026, and roughly twenty percent cheaper than the equivalent meat-led brasseries on the same streets. Starters £6-£10. Mains £14-£18. Sides £5-£7. Desserts £7-£9. Cocktails £11-£14. Wine by the glass £7-£14. A two-course dinner with a glass of wine and a side comes in at around £32 per head before service, or roughly £36 per head with the standard 12.5 percent service charge.

For a West End dinner in 2026 these are properly reasonable numbers. The closest meat-led brasserie equivalents on the same Soho streets — Quo Vadis, Andrew Edmunds, Bocca di Lupo — come in around £55-£75 per head for a two-course-with-wine dinner. Mildred's is the better-value option, particularly at lunch.

Platform-by-platform review analysis

Time Out London: A long-running positive listing and three-time Best Vegetarian Restaurant in London winner (1992, 2005, 2018). Time Out has been recommending Mildred's for thirty-five years.

Hardens: Solidly recommended; consistent four-star ratings across the past decade.

Evening Standard / Guardian / Telegraph: Universally positive coverage across the past thirty years. Jay Rayner (Observer) has written warmly about Mildred's on at least three occasions; Marina O'Loughlin (Sunday Times) was a long-running fan.

The Infatuation London: Top-rated in the West End vegetarian category.

TripAdvisor: 4.4 / 5 from 4,200+ reviews. Five-star reviews repeat the mushroom pie, the Sri Lankan curry and the brownie. The handful of three-star reviews mostly complain about the no-booking dinner policy and the dinner-time queue.

Google Reviews: 4.4 / 5 from 6,500+ reviews. Praise concentrates on the food, the service speed and the value for money. A small number of criticisms mention the noise level at peak.

Happy Cow: Very high rated; cited regularly as the best vegetarian restaurant in Soho.

Reddit r/london, r/AskUK and r/vegan: Cited consistently as the default vegetarian recommendation for visitors to the West End and as one of the most reliable casual restaurants in central London.

What diners love most

1. The mushroom and ale pie. The dish that built Mildred's reputation, still made the way it was thirty years ago, still the order to recommend a first-time visitor.
2. The Sri Lankan sweet potato curry. Coconut, cinnamon, mustard seed, curry leaf — one of the best-priced bowls of food in the West End and the vegan-by-default order.
3. The dark chocolate brownie. Thirty-five years on the menu, rich, dense, properly fudgy. One of the best brownies in central London.
4. The cocktail bar. Underrated piece of the Soho cocktail scene; the Mildred's Negroni is the standout.
5. The walk-in policy. No bookings for dinner means you can drop in spontaneously rather than planning a fortnight ahead.
6. The pre- and post-theatre convenience. Five to fifteen minutes' walk from a dozen West End theatres and open until 11pm Monday to Saturday.
7. The vegan accommodations. Half the menu is naturally vegan and the rest can be adapted; the team is properly trained on substitutions.
8. The thirty-eight-year continuity. Same family of ownership, same kitchen philosophy, same recipes refined over decades. Rare in any London restaurant; unique in vegetarian dining.
9. The service warmth. Long-tenured floor team, fast turnaround at peak, never makes a vegetarian or vegan diner feel they are being accommodated rather than served.

Areas for consideration

1. No bookings for dinner. Walk-in only Monday to Saturday for tables of two to five; the queue at peak (7pm-9pm Friday and Saturday) regularly stretches forty minutes. Arrive at 6pm or after 9.30pm to avoid it, or book the first-floor private room for a group of six or more.
2. Noise level at peak. Friday and Saturday 8pm-10pm tips into properly loud. Conversation across a four-top is difficult. Mid-week visits and lunches are calmer.
3. Limited accessibility upstairs. Ground-floor seating is step-free inside but the first-floor dining room is reachable only by stairs.
4. Tourist-heavy on summer weekends. The audience skews heavily towards visiting tourists in July and August; locals tend to visit mid-week.
5. Menu has not changed dramatically in fifteen years. The signature dishes are still the right orders, but a diner returning after a long absence may find the à la carte familiar. The daily specials board is where the experimental work happens.
6. Tables are turned briskly. The ninety-minute table-hold is fine for most diners but feels rushed for a long catch-up dinner. Book the first floor for a longer evening.

Who Mildred's Soho is best for

✅ West End theatre-goers wanting a pre- or post-show vegetarian dinner; ✅ vegetarian and vegan visitors to London chasing the iconic Soho dining experience; ✅ office workers wanting a midweek lunch that is not a sandwich; ✅ couples wanting a casual mid-priced dinner with proper cocktails; ✅ multi-generational families wanting a single restaurant that works for vegetarian, vegan and meat-eating diners (meat-eaters consistently report enjoying the food on its own merits); ✅ budget-conscious vegetarian dinners in zone 1. ⚠️ Diners chasing a designed dining room — try Bubala Spitalfields or Plates Shoreditch instead. ⚠️ Diners wanting a quiet long dinner — visit mid-week or at lunch. ⚠️ Diners with strict booking-only preferences — lunch can be booked but dinner cannot. ⚠️ Diners wanting fine dining at a Michelin level — this is casual, not formal.

How Mildred's compares with London's vegetarian peers

The honest verdict is that Mildred's and the Gate Hammersmith are the only two restaurants in London genuinely competing in the casual-vegetarian-bistro category at this level of longevity and consistency, and they are doing so in different parts of town. For West End theatre and casual central London dinners, Mildred's is essentially unrivalled. For special-occasion vegetarian dinners with a more designed dining room, the Gate is the better choice. For a Michelin-level plant-based tasting menu, Plates is the answer.

Booking, walk-ins and insider tips

The Soho flagship does not take bookings for dinner Monday to Saturday for tables of two to five; the policy is walk-in only and has been for over twenty years. Lunch bookings (Monday to Saturday 12pm-3pm) and Sunday all-day bookings are accepted via OpenTable for tables of any size. Groups of six or more can book the first-floor private room for dinner via the restaurant directly. The queue at peak dinner times (7pm-9pm Friday and Saturday) is real; the wait is typically 20-45 minutes. The bar serves while you wait.

Insider tips: arrive before 6.30pm or after 9.30pm to skip the dinner queue; order the mushroom pie even if it is not your first instinct; pair it with a glass of the natural Beaujolais; ask the server which special is the head chef's pick of the week; share a side of the charred sprouting broccoli; close with the dark chocolate brownie and a small espresso; the bar will hold a reasonable tab while you wait for a table; the first-floor dining room is the calmer choice if you have a group and book it via the private-hire route; the Camden, King's Cross and Dalston sister sites take dinner bookings if your evening cannot accommodate a queue.

Mildred's Soho London review: 12 FAQs

1. Where is Mildred's in Soho?
Mildred's Soho is at 45 Lexington Street, Soho, London W1F 9AN, six minutes' walk from Piccadilly Circus Tube and seven minutes' walk from Oxford Circus at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

2. Is Mildred's Soho fully vegan or vegetarian?
Mildred's Soho is a fully vegetarian restaurant with roughly half the menu naturally vegan and the rest adaptable to vegan on request at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

3. Does Mildred's Soho take bookings?
Mildred's Soho does not take bookings for dinner Monday to Saturday for tables of two to five; lunch bookings and Sunday all-day bookings are accepted via OpenTable, and groups of six or more can book the first-floor private room at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

4. What are the must-try dishes at Mildred's Soho?
At Mildred's Soho, order the mushroom and ale pie, the Sri Lankan sweet potato curry, the smoky black bean burrito and the dark chocolate brownie at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

5. How much does a meal cost at Mildred's Soho?
A meal at Mildred's Soho is £14-£18 for mains, £7-£9 for desserts and roughly £25-£40 per head for a two-course dinner with a drink at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

6. How long is the queue at Mildred's Soho?
The queue at Mildred's Soho is typically 20-45 minutes Friday and Saturday 7pm-9pm and minimal mid-week; arrive before 6.30pm or after 9.30pm to skip it at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

7. What are the opening hours of Mildred's Soho?
Mildred's Soho is open Monday to Saturday 12pm-11pm and Sunday 12pm-10pm, with the kitchen accepting orders until 10.30pm Monday to Saturday at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

8. Is Mildred's Soho good for pre-theatre dinner?
Mildred's Soho is one of the best pre-theatre dinner spots in the West End, with the Lyceum, Apollo, Palace, Donmar and Old Compton Street theatres all within fifteen minutes' walk at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

9. Does Mildred's Soho have a cocktail bar?
Yes, Mildred's Soho has a full ground-floor cocktail bar serving the signature Mildred's Negroni alongside a small natural-wine list and craft beer selection at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

10. Does Mildred's Soho have wheelchair access?
Mildred's Soho has step-free ground-floor seating and an accessible WC; the first-floor dining room is reachable by stairs only at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

11. Are children welcome at Mildred's Soho?
Yes, Mildred's Soho welcomes children and offers a smaller-portion option from the main menu at this Soho vegetarian restaurant.

12. What is the London Reviews verdict on Mildred's Soho?
London Reviews scores Mildred's Soho 4.6 out of 5 — the most important and best-loved vegetarian restaurant in the West End and a thirty-eight-year-old institution that has aged into something better than its reputation.

London Reviews verdict on Mildred's Soho

Mildred's Soho is, in our view, the single most important non-Indian vegetarian restaurant in London. The 1988 founding was the moment vegetarian dining in central London stopped being a niche concession to dietary requirements and started being a casual mid-market default that was, for the first time, fun. The thirty-eight years of trading since have refined a kitchen philosophy, a service culture and a menu of signature dishes into something that has not just survived but quietly thrived. The mushroom and ale pie is one of the half-dozen most-ordered single dishes in central London. The Sri Lankan curry is the West End's best-priced vegan bowl. The brownie is a small piece of London restaurant history.

The criticisms are real but limited. The no-booking dinner policy creates queues. The peak noise level is loud. The first-floor accessibility is imperfect. The à la carte has not radically changed in fifteen years. None of these undermine the case that Mildred's is the restaurant a West End vegetarian or vegan diner should default to in 2026, exactly as it has been since the late 1980s.

The London Reviews score is 4.6 out of 5. Highly recommended for pre- and post-theatre dinners, midweek lunches, casual vegan first-timers, multi-generational family meals, tourists wanting the iconic London vegetarian experience and any West End office worker wanting a properly-cooked lunch under £20. Book if you can. Walk in if you cannot. Order the mushroom pie. Pair it with the Negroni. Close with the brownie.

What Mildred's Soho offers is the answer to the question every visitor to the West End eventually asks: where is the vegetarian restaurant that locals actually use? The answer is Mildred's. Thirty-eight years of doing the same thing — cooking proper vegetarian and vegan food, serving it casually, charging a fair price for it, staying open later than most West End restaurants — has produced an institution that has shaped what London thinks vegetarian dining is. The newer-generation vegan restaurants like Plates, Mallow and Tendril are doing more interesting work at the cutting edge of plant-based cooking, but none of them has the West End's habitual default-restaurant status, and none of them will accumulate it for another two decades. Mildred's is the restaurant that did the unglamorous work of opening the door for everything that followed. It is still doing the work. Go.

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Summary rating table