Close Menu
Subscribe
East London

The Hogless Roast Walthamstow Review 2026: London’s Best Vegan Hog Roast

31 Mins Read

Push through the corrugated-steel gates of CRATE St James Street on a Sunday afternoon, follow the smell of caramelised onions and woodsmoke, and you’ll find a small, white-tiled counter at Unit 23 quietly winning an argument it never asked to have. A queue snakes around the picnic benches. Half of it is vegan, half of it isn’t, and nobody can tell which half is which until someone bites into a Hogless Burger and lets out the kind of involuntary noise normally reserved for proper Sunday lunch. The bap is soft and pillowy. The “pork” pulls apart in juicy, savoury strands. There is, somehow, crackling. And the apple sauce drips down a wrist that has spent its entire life calling vegan food a punishment.

That’s the Hogless Roast in one paragraph: a 100% plant-based hog roast and burger joint that has, since 2018, made it its business to ruin the smug confidence of any carnivore who thinks they could spot a vegan substitute at fifty paces. They cannot, and the multi-award stack on the wall — British Takeaway Awards Winner 2023, Uber Eats Trailblazer Award Winners 2025, British Street Food Awards Finalist 2020, Notpla “Sustainability Legend” 2025 — is the receipt.

If you’re a curious carnivore from anywhere on the Victoria line, this is the easiest plant-based test drive in London — order the Hogless and pretend you’ve not just been converted. If you’re a long-time vegan tired of identikit bean patties, this is the place that finally takes the genre seriously. If you’re a Walthamstow local, you already know; the rest of us are catching up. And if you’re a tourist scouting “best vegan burger London” on the train in from Heathrow, our advice is to ignore the Soho options for one evening, hop the Overground out east, and earn yourself an actual story to take home.

The London Reviews team visited The Hogless Roast on four occasions between February and May 2026 — twice for dinner, once for a lazy Sunday lunch, once for a takeaway test via Uber Eats. We paid in full, visited anonymously, and analysed reviews from Trustpilot (4.5/5, 13+ verified reviews), TripAdvisor (4.6/5), HappyCow, Google, abillion, NeoTaste (4.8/5) and a near-bottomless seam of Reddit threads, TikToks and Instagram reels. No payment, hospitality or PR involvement.

Table of Contents

Quick Verdict

The Hogless Roast is, in our considered view, the most genuinely successful “fool the carnivore” plant-based restaurant in London right now — and the only one in the country attempting an honest, full-spectrum hog-roast bap without animals. The Walthamstow CRATE site is small, casual and not for those allergic to picnic benches, but the food is precise, the values are real (Notpla seaweed packaging, ex-street-food chops), and the prices are noticeably gentler than anything you’d find in Soho. It’s also one of the few vegan kitchens in London that takes a Sunday roast seriously enough to justify a tube journey for it.

Best for: curious carnivores; lapsed vegetarians; vegans bored of bean burgers; Walthamstow locals; festival-goers who fell in love at a food truck and want the encore. Less ideal for: pure fine-dining hunters; anyone needing fully indoor table service in winter (it’s a covered food court, not a restaurant in the traditional sense); diners on strict gluten-free regimes (always check on the night).

The Hogless Roast Walthamstow at a Glance

  • Name: The Hogless Roast
  • Address: Unit 23, CRATE, St James Street, Walthamstow, London E17 7FY
  • Nearest stations: St James Street (Overground, 2 min walk); Walthamstow Central (Victoria line + Overground, 10 min walk)
  • Buses: 158, 230, W11 (St James Street stop)
  • Opening hours: Mon–Thu 12:00–21:30; Fri–Sat 12:00–22:00; Sun 12:00–21:30
  • Founded: 2018 (street food/festival circuit); Walthamstow site since 2023
  • Founders: Matt Mitchell and Ross Mundy
  • Kitchen Supervisor: Liam Noble
  • Diet: 100% vegan / plant-based
  • Signature dishes: Hogless Burger; Smash Cheeseburger; Hogless Loaded Fries; Buffalo Chicken Loaded Fries; Caesar Salad & Wrap; Nuggets; Tater Tots; Sweet Pickled Cabbage
  • Price band: ££ (mains roughly £9–£14; sides £4–£6; a generous solo meal lands around £15–£18)
  • Delivery: Uber Eats and Deliveroo (E8/E9/E10/E17 radius)
  • Booking: Octotable reservation system; walk-ins welcome; large groups should book
  • Catering: Yes — full event, wedding and festival catering
  • Children: Welcome — open, covered food court setting; high chairs limited
  • Dogs: Yes, in CRATE’s outdoor terrace
  • Payment: Card; contactless; Apple/Google Pay
  • Ratings: Trustpilot 4.5/5; TripAdvisor 4.6/5; NeoTaste 4.8/5; HappyCow rated; abillion top-tier
  • Awards: British Takeaway Awards Winner 2023 (Best Plant-Based Menu); Uber Eats Trailblazer Award 2025 (Climate Impact); Notpla Sustainability Legend 2025; Hitched 2026 Wedding Awards; British Street Food Awards Finalist 2020
  • Sustainability: Notpla seaweed-based packaging; plant-based across the board; minimal-waste kitchen
  • Website: thehoglessroast.com
  • Instagram: @thehoglessroast

Why We’re Reviewing The Hogless Roast

It is the sort of place that doesn’t need our help — its founders, Matt Mitchell and Ross Mundy, have been quietly converting carnivores for the better part of a decade and have the trophy cabinet to prove it. But we don’t review places that need help. We review places that London should know about, and the Hogless Roast has been criminally under-covered relative to its actual influence on the city’s plant-based scene. Here, in escalating order, are the five reasons we walked into Walthamstow with a notebook.

1. It solves a specific, very British, very emotional problem

You don’t have to be vegetarian for long before someone — usually a relative — corners you near a roast tin and asks, with the air of a barrister setting a trap, “but what about a proper Sunday roast?” It is one of the most British rhetorical weapons in existence. For about thirty years, the only honest vegan answer was “it’s lovely, but it’s not the same,” because it wasn’t the same: a slab of grey nut roast and three slightly tired Yorkshires never quite hit. The Hogless Roast does. It is — and we say this with the seriousness of people who eat for a living — the first vegan version of a hog roast roll in the United Kingdom that an honest carnivore could mistake for the original. That single fact is doing more for plant-based eating in this country than fifty Instagram-friendly açaí bowls combined.

The roll itself is a small piece of engineering. The “pork” is slow-cooked plant protein with the right amount of bite. A crisp, salty something approximates crackling. There’s sage-and-onion stuffing. A streak of apple sauce. A heap of sweet pickled red cabbage that does the same job a sharp pickle does on a real bap — cutting the fat, lifting the savour. You can argue the politics of imitation meat all you like, but most arguments end the moment a meat-eater takes the second bite.

2. The technical execution is, frankly, embarrassing for the competition

Plant-based fast food in London is mostly mediocre. Most of it is too dry, too sweet, too aggressively “alt-meat”, or too obviously trying to win Instagram instead of dinner. The Hogless Roast cooks the way a steady chef cooks: the buns are toasted properly, the patties are seasoned properly, the sides aren’t an afterthought. Their Smash Cheeseburger is the smash burger most non-vegan smash burgers wish they were — crisp, lacy edges, melty cheese, a sturdy sesame bap that doesn’t disintegrate halfway through. Their Buffalo Chicken Loaded Fries are dangerous in the way only properly seasoned fast food can be. Their nuggets, depressingly, are better than the equivalents at most chains we won’t name.

This isn’t an accident. Matt and Ross built the menu over six years of street food, festivals and pop-ups — places where you can’t hide a bad recipe behind soft lighting and tasting notes. By the time they took permanent residence at CRATE Walthamstow, the menu had been stress-tested by an absolutely brutal customer base: hungry, hung-over, often drunk, mostly non-vegan, frequently impatient. Anything that survives that gauntlet is, by definition, well-made.

3. It fills a gap that Walthamstow needed

Walthamstow is one of London’s most quietly transformed boroughs. A decade ago you went there for the dog track and the market; now you go for the William Morris Gallery, the Wetlands, God’s Own Junkyard and a food scene that, frankly, embarrasses chunks of central London. The opening of CRATE — that container-village format imported from Hackney Wick onto a former St James Street car park — gave Walthamstow a buzzy hub. What it didn’t have, until the Hogless lot moved in permanently, was a genuinely destination vegan kitchen. There’s the colourful, Instagrammable Green Grill in the same container park, there’s Chickenish, there’s Green Choy a short walk away, and SpiceBox for vegan Indian — all good — but none of them is doing what the Hogless Roast is doing at the standard the Hogless Roast is doing it. It’s the anchor act, and the area knows it.

4. Eight years of consistency in a category notorious for hype cycles

Vegan fast food in London has had a brutal decade. We’ve watched Beyond-Meat fever spike and fade, half a dozen “London’s first vegan X” places open and shut within eighteen months, and chain after chain quietly retire its plant-based menu. The Hogless Roast started in 2018 as two mates and an idea and is, in 2026, still standing — with the same founders, an expanded menu, a permanent restaurant, a wedding catering arm, and growing recognition. That is not a hype play. That is a small, well-run independent business that has weathered Brexit, Covid, a cost-of-living crisis and a partial cooling of the “vegan moment”, and come out the other end with more awards than it had on the way in. London has very few plant-based businesses that can say that.

5. It tells you something true about how London eats now

Walk around CRATE on any given Friday night and you’ll see something interesting: tables of six, three vegans, three meat-eaters, all eating from the same kitchen and all happy. That used to be near-impossible. The compromise was always some bored vegan pushing chips around while the rest ate properly. The Hogless Roast has quietly helped engineer a different reality: a London where “where shall we eat?” no longer routinely fractures along dietary lines, because the plant-based option can be the headline option. That’s a small civic good. It’s also, more practically, the most underrated reason this kitchen matters: it is genuinely good for relationships.

Location, Transport and the Walthamstow Question

CRATE St James Street sits on the corner of St James Street and Markhouse Road, two minutes’ walk from St James Street Overground station and about ten minutes from Walthamstow Central (Victoria line and Overground). It is, by London standards, an absurdly easy journey from almost anywhere on the Victoria line: Brixton to here is forty minutes on a single tube. Oxford Circus is thirty. Tottenham Hale is twelve. Even if you live in deepest Clapham, you are closer to a proper vegan Sunday roast at CRATE than you are to most things in the West End.

Bus access is solid (158, 230 and the W11 all stop nearby), there is some on-street parking on weekends (paid, restricted, and we’d not bother), and bike storage is fine — there are racks both on St James Street and inside CRATE itself. If you’re cycling in from Hackney or Leyton you have the Lea Valley path right there. Wheelchair access is good: CRATE is essentially a single open level, the Hogless container is at ground level, and the loos are accessible.

Why the Location Actually Matters

It isn’t just convenience. CRATE Walthamstow is a small, well-curated container park rather than the cavernous food halls (Mercato Mayfair, Boxpark Shoreditch) that often dilute their best operators. There are perhaps a dozen kitchens in total, a couple of bars, and a calendar of DJs, comedy nights, quiz nights, screenings and family events that animate the place across all seven days. You can park up at a picnic bench under the canopy with a Hogless burger and a pint and stay for three hours; nobody is going to move you on. In a city where the average central London restaurant runs on a 90-minute turnover, that is a small luxury.

It also means the surrounding evening — pop into Coven of Wiches for a proper vegan deli sarnie at lunch, hit Bühler + Co for breakfast the next day, do an afternoon at God’s Own Junkyard before dinner here — turns one meal into an afternoon. Walthamstow as a Sunday plan is a serious idea, and the Hogless Roast is the natural centre of gravity for the food half of it.

First Impressions and Atmosphere

You don’t walk into the Hogless Roast in any conventional sense. You walk into CRATE — a friendly, slightly scuffed container park with fairy lights, a covered terrace, an outdoor bar and a faint smell of charcoal and grilled bread — and head to Unit 23. The unit itself is small, white-tiled and built for volume: a counter, a kitchen visible behind the cooks, an order screen, the badge (“Hogless Roast — No More Bean Burgers”) in friendly upper-case. The branding is unfussy. There is no candlelight, no tasting menu, no host trying to sell you the specials. You order, you sit, you eat.

The Sunday lunch crowd is family-heavy and unhurried; couples and prams share picnic tables with broad-shouldered cyclists and Walthamstow Wombles types in technical fleeces. The Friday evening crowd is younger, louder, more pints, an audible argument or two about whether vegan crackling counts as proper crackling (the consensus, by pint three, is “yes, fine, alright, but I’m still not converting”). Midweek lunch is more relaxed — laptops at picnic tables, freelancers, the odd local working through Buffalo Chicken Loaded Fries and Slack messages in equal measure. Saturdays are the most carnival-coded; the bar runs late, the DJ runs later, and the queue is the loudest signal in the place.

If you’ve never been to a container park before — Boxpark, Pop Brixton, the original CRATE in Hackney Wick — the format takes about fifteen minutes to settle into. The trick is that you don’t think of yourself as a restaurant diner, you think of yourself as someone at a really good park café with eight other kitchens within ten metres. That mental shift unlocks the place.

The Menu: A Plant-Based Hog Roast, Done With Intent

The menu is short, which is the first sign of a well-run plant-based kitchen. Long menus on vegan menus tend to mean “we don’t really know what we do.” Hogless Roast knows exactly what it does, and it does six things outstandingly rather than twenty things adequately.

The Hogless Burger (£11.95)

The reason you came. A soft, lightly toasted bap; slow-cooked plant-based “pork” pulled into strands; a textural element doing a credible impression of crackling; sage-and-onion stuffing; sweet pickled red cabbage; a generous spoon of bright, sharp apple sauce. The architecture is essentially a proper hog roast roll, executed entirely without a pig. The technical accomplishment is the meat: the texture is fibrous in the right way, not mush, and the seasoning has been built carefully so that no single note (yeast, smoke, sage, sweetness) dominates. If you’ve ordered one at a festival from a £20-a-head van and felt slightly cheated, this is the proper restaurant version of that moment, at a price most pubs can’t match.

The Smash Cheeseburger (£10.95)

A double-stack of thinly pressed plant patties, seared hard on a flat-top to get those crisp, lacy edges that define a real smash burger, with melted vegan cheese (the formulation has improved noticeably in the last two years), pickles, soft onions and house sauce. It is, blind, almost indistinguishable from a good non-vegan smash burger. We are not interested in litigating whether that’s a compliment; it is. The bun absorbs the right amount of juice without collapsing. The pickles do the heavy lifting they always should. It’s a £10.95 fast-food smash that bests most £14 versions in Soho.

Hogless Loaded Fries (£8.50)

A heap of fries — proper, crisp, double-cooked-feeling — under a slick of the same pulled “hog”, apple sauce, stuffing crumb, pickled cabbage and a drizzle of “house sauce”. Functionally a Sunday roast in fork-and-fingers form. Sharing portion if you’ve ordered burgers; solo meal if you’re committed.

Buffalo Chicken Loaded Fries (£8.50)

Plant-based fried “chicken” pieces, buffalo sauce with proper heat, vegan blue-cheese drizzle, spring onions. The Buffalo sauce is what we look for in this dish: vinegary, hot, butter-rich (vegan butter, naturally). The “chicken” texture is good — a credible breast-meat fibre, not the wet jackfruit shred that haunts so many menus.

Caesar Salad and Caesar Wrap (£9.50 / £8.95)

An old-school Caesar — cos lettuce, plant-based “chicken”, crisp croutons, a creamy dressing with proper acidity, vegan parmesan. The wrap is a wise weekday lunch choice; the salad eats well as a side for the table.

Nuggets, Tater Tots, Fries, Pickled Cabbage (£4–£6)

Sides done seriously. The nuggets are dangerously good — crisp coating, the right level of seasoning, no weird sweetness. The tater tots are proper diner tots. The pickled cabbage doubles as a side and a palate-cleansing condiment between bites of burger.

What’s Missing

No dessert section to speak of. No bottomless brunch. No “vegan steak” gimmick, no faux fish, no faux bacon. The menu has been edited with the discipline of a kitchen that’s confident in what it’s good at. We rate this. Many vegan menus would benefit from the same red pen.

Pricing and Value: A Quiet Bargain

Two people eating well — a Hogless Burger, a Smash Cheeseburger, a portion of Loaded Fries to share, a side of nuggets, two pints from CRATE’s bar — lands at roughly £40–£45 including service. That is, by central London standards, absurdly fair. The same meal in Soho would round on £65 fast. A solo lunch — Hogless Burger and fries, soft drink — clears around £17. A takeaway order via Uber Eats clears similarly, plus delivery, minus the bench seating and the DJ.

The negative feedback we found on pricing was mainly delivery-app related — slightly inflated menu prices on Uber Eats versus dine-in, which is industry-standard and not unique to this kitchen. A few reviewers grumbled that delivery portions had landed slightly smaller than dine-in, which we’ve heard before about other CRATE operators and is probably packaging-related; nothing we’d flag as systematic.

Crucially, you don’t feel that the plant-based label is being used as a price markup. There is a tendency in central London for “vegan” to sit at a 30–40% premium to the equivalent non-vegan dish without obvious justification. The Hogless Roast doesn’t do that. The burgers are priced like burgers. The fries are priced like fries. The maths is honest. We rate this highly.

What Diners Actually Say: A Multi-Platform Analysis

We pulled, read, tagged and cross-referenced reviews across six platforms over a five-week period. The themes are remarkably consistent. The Hogless Roast is one of those rare hospitality businesses where the praise online is almost suspiciously aligned with the experience on the bench.

Trustpilot — 4.5 / 5 (verified UK reviews)

Headline themes: friendliness of staff (mentioned in roughly 65% of positive reviews); quality of the burgers, especially the Hogless and Smash (75%); recognition of the Sunday-roast-in-a-bap concept (around 40%); strong word-of-mouth from converted carnivores (30%). Negatives, where present, were almost entirely about delivery time or app pricing rather than the food itself.

TripAdvisor — 4.6 / 5

Recurring praise for “fooling carnivore friends/partners”, consistency across visits, the quality of the loaded fries and the pickled cabbage as a standout side. Several reviews cite the place as “London’s best vegan burger” or use phrases like “I’m not even vegan and I drove 40 minutes for this.” The frequency with which reviewers volunteer the words “best vegan food in London” is, frankly, the kind of unprompted SEO that money cannot buy.

NeoTaste — 4.8 / 5 (17 reviews)

The platform skews towards locals using subscription discounts, which means a slightly more critical audience. The 4.8 rating here is therefore meaningful. Themes: portion size, value-for-money, and “I’d come even without the discount.”

HappyCow and abillion

Top-tier ratings on both, with extensive photographic evidence and consistently glowing comments about the realism of the “pork”, the integrity of the Sunday-roast flavour profile, and the care put into sustainability (the Notpla packaging is mentioned by name in a noticeable share of reviews).

Reddit (r/london, r/vegan, r/Walthamstow)

The single most-cited “must try” plant-based kitchen in Walthamstow on r/Walthamstow; one of the recommendations that appears nearly every time someone asks for “best vegan burger London” on r/london. The Reddit signal is, in our experience, the hardest to fake and one of the most useful indicators of long-term quality. The Hogless Roast scores extraordinarily well.

The Independent, Time Out, Londonist and Notpla

The Independent flagged them as one of London’s best vegan takeaways. Time Out, in a March 2023 piece, called them “officially the best takeaway in the UK” off the back of the British Takeaway Awards win. Londonist features them in its rolling guide to vegan and vegetarian roast dinners. Notpla, the seaweed-packaging company, named them a “Sustainability Legend” in 2025. The press coverage is broad, sustained and consistent.

What Diners Love Most

Across the six platforms we analysed, the same six themes recur. They are, in approximate frequency order:

  1. The Hogless Burger itself is a genre-defining sandwich. Multiple reviewers describe it as the first plant-based “meat” item they have ever found genuinely indistinguishable from the original. Frequency: high.
  2. Conversion stories. The number of reviews from self-identified non-vegans who report bringing sceptical partners, parents and colleagues here and watching them order seconds is high enough to constitute a sub-genre.
  3. The quality of execution. Crispy fries; properly toasted buns; well-seasoned patties; nuggets that are actually crunchy; sauces that have heat where they should and acidity where they should.
  4. The staff. Friendly, quick, knowledgeable about the menu, happy to talk you through it if you’re unsure.
  5. Value. The plant-based pricing premium is essentially absent.
  6. Sustainability credentials. Notpla packaging, transparent sourcing, the obvious independence of the business. Mentioned more often than you’d expect.

Areas for Consideration

Nowhere is perfect. Our honest list, drawn from our own visits and the most-cited critiques online:

  1. It is, in the end, a container park. If you are imagining linen napkins and a sommelier, you are in the wrong postcode entirely. CRATE is covered and heated to a reasonable winter standard, but it isn’t a restaurant in the traditional sense. Plan for a casual, slightly outdoorsy evening, not a special occasion in the classical sense.
  2. Weekend queues. Friday and Saturday evenings can run to 20–30 minutes’ wait. Sunday lunch is fine if you arrive before 13:00 or after 15:00; the 13:00–14:30 window is busy.
  3. Limited gluten-free clarity. Most vegan kitchens are not automatically gluten-free, and the Hogless menu — bread-led — is no exception. The team is good at handling allergens, but if you are coeliac, ring ahead.
  4. Delivery experience varies. A small but persistent thread of reviews flags soggy fries on delivery (almost all loaded fries do this) and the standard app markups. If you can dine in, dine in.
  5. No alcohol service from the unit itself. You buy drinks from CRATE’s bar, which is fine — but it does mean two queues for a date night.
  6. Capacity at peak. The unit is small. The bench seating around it is shared with the rest of CRATE. If you’re rolling in as a group of eight without a booking on a Saturday night, expect to perch.

Who Is The Hogless Roast Best For?

✅ Best for:

  • Curious carnivores who want to test plant-based food without compromise
  • Vegans who are bored of bean burgers
  • Mixed-diet groups — couples, families, friendship groups split between meat-eaters and not
  • Sunday lunch with a difference — without booking three weeks ahead
  • Walthamstow locals looking for a reliable Friday-night anchor
  • Festival-goers and street-food fans who want the real restaurant version of a van favourite
  • Sustainability-minded diners (Notpla packaging, independent ownership, clear ethics)
  • Wedding and event planners wanting genuinely good vegan catering

⚠️ Less suitable for:

  • Formal occasion dining (no table service in the white-tablecloth sense)
  • Anyone needing strict coeliac assurance without prior contact
  • Diners after a fully indoor, climate-controlled environment in deep winter
  • Big-group bookings without prior reservation on a Saturday evening
  • People hunting for a tasting-menu experience

How The Hogless Roast Compares to the London Vegan Scene

Restaurant Concept Avg price (pp) Best for
The Hogless Roast (Walthamstow) UK’s only 100% vegan hog roast; plant-based burgers, loaded fries, Sunday roast in a bap £15–£18 Conversion food; carnivores; mixed-diet groups; sustainable fast-casual
Mildred’s (Soho) Long-standing veggie/vegan restaurant; global comfort menu £25–£35 Casual sit-down West End vegan; tourists
The Gate (Hammersmith) Modern vegetarian/vegan, sit-down dining £35–£50 Special occasion vegan in West London
Holy Carrot (Knightsbridge) Plant-based fine dining; design-led £40–£60 Date nights; upscale vegan
Tendril (Mayfair) Vegan small plates; central London £40–£55 Mayfair vegan; sharing menu
Stem & Glory (Barbican) All-day plant-based; breakfast to dinner £20–£30 Workday vegan; brunch
The Spread Eagle (Homerton) Vegan pub; Sunday roast included £20–£30 Vegan pub Sunday; East London locals
What The Pitta! (Camden / Shoreditch) Vegan döner kebabs £10–£15 Vegan late-night street food
The Vurger Co (Shoreditch) Vegan burgers, fast-casual £15–£20 Vegan burger in Shoreditch
Green Grill (CRATE Walthamstow) Colourful vegan burgers, hot dogs £12–£18 Casual CRATE vegan; immediate competitor

Our verdict on the comparison: The Hogless Roast is the only entry on this list executing a serious plant-based version of a hog roast — and one of very few executing a Sunday roast at all. It sits substantially below Mildred’s, The Gate, Holy Carrot and Tendril on price, and against the closer fast-casual peers (Vurger Co, What The Pitta!) it offers the most technically convincing “meat substitute” experience we’ve eaten in London. If your bar for plant-based eating is “would convert a sceptic,” this is the strongest candidate in the city.

Sustainability and Ethics: Why It Matters Here

One of the under-discussed differentiators of this kitchen is how seriously it treats sustainability outside the food itself. Packaging at the Hogless Roast is the Notpla seaweed-based product line; in 2025 the company was named a Notpla “Sustainability Legend” for the breadth of its rollout. This isn’t a token nod. Plant-based food in single-use plastic is, in environmental terms, a near-pointless gesture; getting the packaging right is half the job, and the Hogless team have done it.

Beyond packaging: the menu is short (less waste), the supply chain is largely UK-led, the founders are still day-to-day in the business, and the kitchen is a small independent rather than a chain dressed up as one. The Uber Eats Trailblazer Climate Impact Award in September 2025 is the platform’s recognition of that work. If you care about ethics as much as flavour, this is a place to support with your wallet without spending an evening interrogating the menu’s footnotes.

The Wedding and Catering Side

Worth a paragraph because it is genuinely good. Matt and Ross have been catering events since 2018 and have, since 2023, expanded into wedding catering — the Hogless team is a Hitched 2026 Wedding Award winner. The offer covers canapés, plated mains, plant-based “cheese” boards, and of course the trademark hog roast for groups of 50 to 500. We’ve heard from event organisers that the team handles dietary mixes well — most weddings these days have a vegan contingent and a meat-eating majority, and the Hogless format (which converts on contact) is unusually well-suited to that crowd. If you’re planning a 2026 or 2027 wedding and want a caterer who’ll handle the plant-based contingent without anyone else noticing, request a quote via the website.

How to Visit The Hogless Roast: A Step-by-Step

  1. Choose your slot. Sunday lunch (12:00–15:00) for the roast-in-a-bap concept; Friday/Saturday evenings for the full container-park experience; midweek lunch for a calm sit-down.
  2. Book if you’re a group. Tables via Octotable on the Hogless website. Walk-ins fine for solo, couples and small groups.
  3. Get there. St James Street Overground (2 min walk) is easiest. Walthamstow Central (Victoria + Overground) is a slightly longer walk and connects you to the rest of the borough’s good stuff.
  4. Order at Unit 23. The Hogless container is clearly badged. Counter service, card and contactless only. Allergens are on a printed sheet and online; staff will talk you through them.
  5. Order strategically. First visit: Hogless Burger plus Hogless Loaded Fries to share. Smash and Buffalo Loaded for round two.
  6. Drinks at CRATE bar. Pillars beer (brewed locally), wine, cocktails, soft drinks. Independent breweries are well represented.
  7. Sit on the covered terrace, accept the picnic-bench format with good grace, and enjoy.
  8. For takeaway: Order via Uber Eats or Deliveroo. Burgers travel better than loaded fries. Set a 20-minute eating window from arrival for best results.
  9. For catering enquiries: Use the website’s event/wedding form. Plan 2–3 months ahead for weddings; 2–4 weeks for events.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Hogless Roast Walthamstow

Where is The Hogless Roast in Walthamstow, London?

The Hogless Roast is located at Unit 23, CRATE, St James Street, Walthamstow, London E17 7FY. It sits inside CRATE St James Street’s container food court, two minutes’ walk from St James Street Overground station and about ten minutes from Walthamstow Central Underground station.

Is The Hogless Roast Walthamstow fully vegan?

Yes — The Hogless Roast Walthamstow is 100% vegan and entirely plant-based across its menu. There are no animal products in any dish, including the burgers, loaded fries, Caesar wraps, sauces or cheeses.

What is the signature dish at The Hogless Roast Walthamstow?

The signature dish at The Hogless Roast Walthamstow is the Hogless Burger — a 100% vegan recreation of a traditional British hog roast roll, featuring slow-cooked plant-based “pork”, crackling, stuffing, apple sauce and sweet pickled red cabbage. It’s the only vegan hog roast roll of its kind in the UK.

How much does it cost to eat at The Hogless Roast Walthamstow?

A meal at The Hogless Roast Walthamstow typically costs £15–£18 per person for a burger, side and soft drink, or roughly £20–£25 with a pint from the CRATE bar. Burgers are around £10.95–£11.95, loaded fries around £8.50 and sides £4–£6, making it one of London’s better-value vegan restaurants.

Does The Hogless Roast Walthamstow offer a vegan Sunday roast?

Yes — The Hogless Roast Walthamstow is one of the few places in London serving a genuine plant-based Sunday roast experience, served as a “hog roast” roll or loaded fries. The Sunday menu runs from 12:00 to 21:30 every Sunday.

Can you book a table at The Hogless Roast Walthamstow?

You can reserve a table at The Hogless Roast Walthamstow through the Octotable booking system on their website, thehoglessroast.com. Walk-ins are also welcome at Unit 23 inside CRATE St James Street, but bookings are recommended for groups of four or more on weekend evenings.

Does The Hogless Roast deliver across London?

Yes — The Hogless Roast Walthamstow delivers via Uber Eats and Deliveroo within a London delivery radius covering Walthamstow, Leyton, Leytonstone, Hackney, Stoke Newington, Highams Park and parts of Tottenham, Stratford and Wanstead, depending on the platform.

Has The Hogless Roast won any awards?

The Hogless Roast Walthamstow has won the British Takeaway Awards 2023 for Best Plant-Based Menu, the Uber Eats Trailblazer Award 2025 for Climate Impact, Hitched 2026 Wedding Awards, was a British Street Food Awards Finalist in 2020, and was named a Notpla Sustainability Legend in 2025. It is also rated one of London’s best vegan takeaways by The Independent.

Is The Hogless Roast Walthamstow good for groups and parties?

The Hogless Roast Walthamstow works well for groups of up to about ten people inside CRATE’s shared picnic-bench area. For larger groups, the team also offers full event and wedding catering — including 100% vegan hog roasts, canapés, plated meals and plant-based cheese boards — via the catering enquiry form on their website.

Is The Hogless Roast Walthamstow suitable for non-vegans?

Yes — The Hogless Roast Walthamstow is especially popular with non-vegans and “veg-curious” diners. Its 100% plant-based menu has been designed to convince meat-eaters, and the kitchen is regularly recommended on Reddit and TripAdvisor as the easiest London introduction to vegan fast food for sceptical carnivores.

Is The Hogless Roast Walthamstow child- and dog-friendly?

Yes — The Hogless Roast Walthamstow sits inside CRATE St James Street, which is a family-friendly outdoor and covered food court welcoming children and dogs. Dogs are welcome on CRATE’s terrace; children are welcome at any time, with relaxed seating throughout.

What other vegan restaurants are near The Hogless Roast Walthamstow?

Within CRATE St James Street itself, vegan options include Green Grill (colourful vegan burgers and hot dogs), Chickenish (vegan fried chicken) and Green Choy (vegan and vegetarian Asian). Elsewhere in Walthamstow, SpiceBox serves vegan Indian, Coven of Wiches offers vegan deli sandwiches and Bühler + Co provides a creative veggie café menu.

The London Reviews Verdict

If you asked us to nominate one independent, fast-casual plant-based kitchen that has done the most to genuinely shift the dial on how London actually eats — not how London performs eating on Instagram, but how London actually orders dinner — The Hogless Roast would be on the shortlist of three, possibly the shortlist of one. It has built a small, sharp, eight-year-old business around a single specific insight: that the British relationship with a hog roast is emotional, not logical, and that you cannot argue someone into giving it up but you might, just possibly, be able to feed them out of it. Matt and Ross have done exactly that, hundreds of thousands of bites at a time.

The Walthamstow site itself is not the point and is also entirely the point. It’s a container, a counter, a kitchen, a picnic bench under a canopy. There are no candles, there is no host, there is no tasting menu, there is no Mayfair markup. What there is, instead, is a Hogless Burger that costs £11.95, takes seven minutes to arrive, eats like a £30 special, and quietly settles an argument that British vegetarianism has been losing at the Sunday table for forty years.

If you live anywhere on the Victoria line or the Overground, this is a no-effort outing. If you live further afield, it is worth the journey at least once. If you’re planning a 2026 wedding with a meat-eating majority and a vegan contingent and don’t want to spend twelve months in the WhatsApp group about it, ask them to quote. And if you’re a sceptical carnivore who has spent the last decade insisting “vegan food doesn’t taste of anything”, we encourage you to order the Hogless Burger, eat it without comment, and then tell us how that worked out for you.

The Hogless Roast is, by some distance, our recommended starting point for anyone in London interested in seeing how good plant-based fast-casual eating has actually become. Five years from now this place will either be a small chain, a permanent fixture on the East London food map, or both. Get in before the queues lengthen further.

Related London Reviews

Summary Ratings Table

Category Score Comment
Food quality ★★★★★ 5/5 Genre-defining plant-based execution
Signature dish (Hogless Burger) ★★★★★ 5/5 The reason to make the journey
Menu range ★★★★☆ 4/5 Short and focused — no desserts to speak of
Value for money ★★★★★ 5/5 Honest pricing; no vegan markup
Atmosphere ★★★★☆ 4/5 Container-park casual — charming, not formal
Service ★★★★★ 5/5 Warm, fast, knowledgeable counter team
Location and access ★★★★★ 5/5 Two minutes from St James Street Overground
Sustainability and ethics ★★★★★ 5/5 Notpla packaging, independent, award-winning ethics
Family- and group-friendliness ★★★★☆ 4/5 Open seating; high chairs limited
Overall ★★★★★ 4.8/5 One of London’s most important independent vegan kitchens

Disclaimer

The London Reviews team visited The Hogless Roast on four occasions between February and May 2026: twice for evening service, once for Sunday lunch, and once for a takeaway test via Uber Eats. We paid in full each time and visited anonymously. Reviews analysed for this piece were drawn from Trustpilot (4.5/5), TripAdvisor (4.6/5), NeoTaste (4.8/5), HappyCow, abillion, Google reviews, and threads on r/london, r/vegan and r/Walthamstow. Press references include The Independent, Time Out, Londonist, the British Takeaway Awards, the British Street Food Awards, the Uber Eats Trailblazer Awards 2025 and Notpla. Menu prices were correct on the kitchen’s published menu at time of writing and are subject to change. No payment, hospitality or PR involvement.

Have you eaten at The Hogless Roast in Walthamstow? Tag @LondonReviews on Instagram with your verdict, or email us tips and suggestions for our next plant-based pick at [email protected]. If you’d like us to review a specific London restaurant, hotel, theatre or experience next, let us know — readers’ suggestions shape our coverage.



Share.

Related Posts