The Spread Eagle Homerton London Review: The UK’s First Fully Vegan Pub Eight Years On

The Spread Eagle in Homerton is the UK’s first fully vegan pub, a beautifully preserved Victorian corner boozer on Homerton High Street that has spent the past eight years quietly rewriting what plant-based hospitality can look like. Opened in early 2018, the pub keeps every familiar element of a proper London local — wood panelling, etched glass, a long wooden bar, the smell of beer and roast — and rebuilds the rest from the ground up: no animal-derived finings in the beer, no honey in the cocktails, no leather on the benches, no wool on the carpet. The kitchen, which the pub built in partnership with vegan operators Club Mexicana and a rotating cast of pop-ups, turns out the kind of Sunday roast, pie and chips and short-rib chilli that converts the most stubborn omnivore. This Spread Eagle Homerton London review takes the room, the menu, the beer list, the cocktails and the East London context on their own terms, and sets them alongside every other vegan and vegetarian London restaurant we have covered — Mildred’s Soho, Plates Shoreditch, Gauthier Soho, Holy Carrot, The Gate Hammersmith, Mallow, Stem & Glory, Tibits, Farmacy, Tofu Vegan, Ethos Fitzrovia, The Vurger Co Shoreditch, Itadaki Zen King’s Cross and 222 Vegan Cuisine Fulham. If you are wondering whether the UK’s first vegan pub still holds up in 2026, this is the read for you.

Table of Contents

• Why we’re reviewing The Spread Eagle Homerton
• The Spread Eagle Homerton at a glance
• Location and getting there
• First impressions and atmosphere
• The kitchen: residencies and philosophy
• The menu: what to expect
• Beer, cocktails and wine
• Pricing and value for money
• Platform-by-platform review analysis
• What drinkers and diners love most
• Areas for consideration
• Who is The Spread Eagle Homerton best for?
• How it compares to other London vegan venues
• How to book and insider tips
• The Spread Eagle Homerton London review: 10 FAQs
• London Reviews verdict
• Related London Reviews
• Summary rating table

The Spread Eagle Homerton at a glance

Why we’re reviewing The Spread Eagle Homerton

British vegan dining gets reviewed regularly; British vegan pubs almost never. The Spread Eagle was the first venue to flip the proposition — open a proper London pub, with proper London-pub things in it, and make every single one of them animal-free, from the beer through to the carpet. Eight years on, the experiment has spawned imitators across the UK; none have yet matched the original’s quietly serious approach to the format.

The second reason is the building. The Spread Eagle is a late-Victorian corner pub on the Hackney CAMRA list of buildings of note, with original etched glass, dark-stained timber and a long curved bar. Most plant-based venues in London are housed in former industrial spaces or new-build developments; The Spread Eagle is in a working historic pub, and the contrast is precisely the point.

The third reason is the kitchen. The pub partnered at launch with Meriel Armitage’s Club Mexicana for its food offering, and has since run a rotating programme of vegan kitchen residencies that has included some of London’s most interesting plant-based operators. The result is a menu that genuinely changes — not a static printed card you have memorised — and a kitchen that punches well above the average pub-grub weight.

Location and getting there

The Spread Eagle sits at 224 Homerton High Street, on the corner where Homerton High Street meets Marsh Hill, a few minutes’ walk west from Hackney Marshes and a few minutes’ walk east from Hackney Central. The address is in the heart of Homerton, a neighbourhood that has shifted in the past decade from working-class North-East London to a mixed crowd of creatives, families, hospital workers (Homerton University Hospital is a five-minute walk east) and long-term residents. The pub feels firmly embedded in this evolving local context.

By train, Homerton Overground station is one minute’s walk south-east; the Mildmay line (formerly the North London line of the Overground) runs through it. Hackney Central is twelve minutes’ walk west and adds Hackney Downs to the connections list. Stratford on the Elizabeth, Jubilee, Central and DLR lines is fifteen minutes’ bus ride east.

By bus, the 26 (from Waterloo), 30, 236, 308 and 425 stop within two minutes’ walk of the pub on Homerton High Street. Stop F on Homerton High Street is the most useful drop-off. The 388 from Hackney Wick is the most scenic of the routes, passing the Olympic Park as it goes.

By bike, the area is well-served. A Santander Cycles docking station on Brooksby’s Walk is two minutes’ walk away. The Lea Valley Towpath is reachable in eight minutes’ cycle south-east. Drivers face the usual East-London restrictions — the address is inside the ULEZ — and on-street parking is limited; visitors arriving by car should plan to use public transport instead, especially on weekend evenings.

First impressions and atmosphere

The first thing you notice is the building. The Spread Eagle is a textbook late-Victorian corner pub: a wedge-shaped façade with green-tiled lower walls, a tall sash window above each side and a hanging sign that has been painted over but kept structurally intact. The interior preserves the period bones — etched glass in the door panels, a long mahogany bar that wraps around the room, dark-stained timber on the lower walls, and brass rails on the bar where the foot was supposed to rest.

What is different is what has been removed and replaced. Leather banquettes have been swapped for plant-based upholstery. The carpet, originally wool, has been replaced with a hard-wearing synthetic. The food-display fridge holds vegan cheeses rather than scotch eggs. The till receipts are printed on recycled paper. None of these substitutions advertise themselves; the pub still feels like a pub.

The crowd is mixed. Weeknights tend toward post-work locals, hospital staff, dog-walkers and a steady contingent of vegan regulars from across East London. Friday and Saturday nights bring a younger, louder crowd. Sunday afternoons are quieter, family-friendly, with a high proportion of pushchairs and rescue dogs sleeping under tables. The team has done a quietly clever job of building a room that is properly inclusive without making a song about it.

The smell is the giveaway. The kitchen smell is roast onion, dripping fat (vegan dripping, but the same chemistry), fresh chips and beer. The first time vegan friends bring an omnivore friend, the friend almost always says, before lifting a glass: “this smells exactly like a pub.” That, in essence, is the whole point.

The kitchen: residencies and philosophy

The Spread Eagle opened in January 2018 under a partnership between Meriel Armitage of Club Mexicana — the pop-up that had earned a reputation across East London for vegan tacos and tequila — and pub owners Sherri-Lee Mantle and Luke McLaughlin. The launch food offering was Club Mexicana’s full menu plus pub classics; over time the model evolved into a rotating kitchen-residency programme that now sees a different vegan operator take over the food side for three to six months at a time.

Past residencies have included Club Mexicana itself (still a frequent returnee), Young Vegans (pies), Erpingham House (vegan fish-and-chip-style dishes), and a handful of solo chefs road-testing their first restaurant concepts. The pub-classics backbone — Sunday roast, burger, fish-style and chips, mac & cheese — runs through every residency. New dishes appear when a new operator arrives.

The kitchen philosophy is fundamentally inclusive. The team believes that vegan pub food should taste like pub food, not like a virtuous substitute, and the resident chefs are encouraged to lean into familiar flavours. Mushroom stocks replace meat stocks; aquafaba and oat milk fill in for egg and dairy; seitan, jackfruit and oyster mushrooms do the work of meat textures. The cooking is generous rather than precious.

Sustainability is wired in. Beer is bought from breweries that have removed isinglass (a fish-derived fining) from their cask offerings. Wine and cocktails are vegan by default. Food packaging for takeaway is compostable. Cleaning products and even glues used in furniture maintenance are vetted to be animal-free. The level of detail is, frankly, more rigorous than at most so-called “vegan-friendly” venues.

The menu: what to expect

The menu rotates with the kitchen residency but the backbone is dependable. The current line-up includes a vegan Sunday roast, beer-battered tofu and chips, a mushroom shepherd’s pie, a seitan and ale pie with mash, a jackfruit chilli served with cornbread, and a short list of bar snacks and small plates.

The vegan Sunday roast is the dish that pulls diners from across London. It is built around a herb-stuffed seitan-and-mushroom centrepiece, served with roast potatoes that have been par-boiled, shaken and roasted in vegan duck fat (yes, that is a thing), a tray of seasonal veg, vegan Yorkshire pudding and an onion gravy that is properly thickened. The portion is heroic; the gravy boat refills are free; the room on a Sunday afternoon is the busiest and most pleasantly chaotic of the week.

The beer-battered tofu and chips is the dish to order the rest of the time. The batter is made with the house IPA, the chips are triple-cooked, the tartare uses caper-and-aquafaba mayo, the mushy peas are properly minted. It is a dish that does not exist anywhere else in London at this quality.

The mushroom shepherd’s pie uses a base of lentils, walnuts and mixed wild mushrooms under a creamy potato top with a crisp crust. The seitan and ale pie is the cold-weather choice — a shortcrust top, slow-cooked seitan in a porter gravy, served with garlic mash and minted peas.

Bar snacks rotate. Crispy buffalo cauliflower wings are a permanent fixture; nachos with vegan queso and pickled jalapeños come with the Club Mexicana residency; salt-and-vinegar oyster mushrooms are the chef’s special when in season. Sourdough flatbreads with vegan whipped feta and chargrilled vegetables appear in summer.

Desserts are short and rich. A sticky toffee pudding with vegan butterscotch and oat-cream is the bestseller. A chocolate brownie with espresso ice cream is the runner-up. A seasonal cheesecake rotates by month. Coffee is by a small Hackney roaster; tea is loose-leaf.

Beer, cocktails and wine

The beer programme is the most ambitious in vegan London. Six cask lines and ten keg lines rotate weekly; every beer is fully vegan, with no isinglass or other animal-derived finings. Local breweries dominate — Pillars from Walthamstow, Hammerton from Islington, Beavertown from Tottenham, Howling Hops from Hackney, Old Kent Road from Bermondsey. Cask pints are £5.50 to £6.50; keg pints £6 to £7.50.

Cocktails are inventive. The signature aquafaba tequila sour — using chickpea-brine in place of egg white — has been written up in the Guardian and the Evening Standard; it is the drink most reviewers single out as a reason to visit. The vegan negroni uses London-distilled Sipsmith gin and a small-batch English vermouth. A Bloody Mary uses fresh tomato pressing and a celery-salt-and-chilli rim. A spiced rum punch and a passion-fruit martini round out the regulars.

Wine is short and entirely vegan. Roughly fifteen bins, with strong leans toward Italian and Loire organic and biodynamic producers. Glasses from £6.50; bottles £25 to £58. The wine team will happily talk pairings; a robust Italian Sangiovese with the seitan and ale pie is the kitchen’s pick.

Spirits cover the standards plus a small selection of craft gins and rums. The non-alcoholic offering is unusually strong: Lucky Saint alcohol-free lager on draught, Three Spirit aperitifs, alcohol-free aquafaba cocktails, Square Root sodas, fresh juices and good filter coffee.

Pricing and value for money

Pricing at The Spread Eagle is consistent with the better East-London gastropubs and slightly below the central-London sit-down vegan restaurants. Bar snacks £4.50 to £8. Mains £14 to £19. Sunday roast £18.50. Cask pints £5.50 to £6.50; cocktails £10 to £13. The pub does not pad bills with cover charges.

Compared with the East-London gastropub average, the bill at The Spread Eagle is fair. A meat-and-dairy Sunday roast at a comparable Homerton or Hackney pub will routinely clear £22 to £24; the vegan version here is £18.50 with a properly heroic portion. The beer is the same price as any London pub of equivalent quality.

Platform-by-platform review analysis

The Spread Eagle sits in the top tier of London vegan venues across every platform we checked. Consistency is the through-line: this is a pub that has not slipped over eight years.

Google Reviews: 4.6 / 5 from 1,000+ reviews. Praise concentrates on the Sunday roast, the beer programme and the warm atmosphere. Criticisms cluster around weekend queue length and the limited Tuesday-only quiz capacity.

TripAdvisor: 4.4 / 5 from 200+ reviews. The data here skews toward visiting diners rather than regulars; the Sunday roast dominates the five-star reviews.

Hackney CAMRA: a strong recommendation as both an architecturally significant Victorian corner pub and a vegan pioneer. The branch has run multiple vegan beer events at the venue.

Time Out London: a continuous four-star recommendation since 2018, refreshed three times.

The Guardian and Evening Standard: both have run features on the aquafaba tequila sour and the Sunday roast.

Happy Cow: in the top five London vegan listings, with consistent praise for the breadth of the beer programme.

Reddit r/london and r/VeganUK: cited in dozens of recommendation threads as the place to take a sceptical omnivore for a vegan Sunday roast.

What drinkers and diners love most

1. The Sunday roast. The single most-praised dish across every platform. Heroic portions, proper roast potatoes, gravy that refills for free.
2. The aquafaba tequila sour. The cocktail that put the pub on the national radar in 2018 and continues to convert sceptics today.
3. The beer programme. Six rotating cask lines and ten kegs, every one fully vegan, with a strong East-London independent-brewery focus.
4. The building. A late-Victorian corner pub on the Hackney CAMRA list, preserved in its bones, brought into the present with intent rather than gimmick.
5. The kitchen residencies. A revolving roster of vegan kitchens keeps the menu changing and the dining experience fresh; Club Mexicana, Young Vegans and Erpingham House have all been highlights.
6. The Tuesday pub quiz. A genuinely competitive quiz with prizes that include a brewery tour and free Sunday roasts.
7. The dog-friendly atmosphere. Water bowls, soft greeting from staff, dogs welcome under the table — one of the better dog-friendly venues in East London.
8. The team. Floor staff and bar team are repeatedly described as warm, knowledgeable, patient with first-time vegan-pub visitors and confident with regulars.

Areas for consideration

A fair Spread Eagle Homerton London review must record the recurring grumbles.

1. Sunday roast queue. Without a booking, the wait for a Sunday-roast table between 1pm and 3pm can stretch beyond 45 minutes. Book ahead.
2. Closed on Monday and weekday lunches. The pub does not open before 4pm Tuesday to Thursday and is closed all Monday. Visitors arriving for a weekday lunch will be disappointed.
3. Acoustic sharpness on a Saturday night. The hard surfaces and high ceilings amplify a packed room; conversation can become hard work after 9pm at the weekend.
4. Residency-menu variability. When a new kitchen takes over, the bedding-in period can deliver inconsistent dishes for the first two or three weeks. The pub is candid about this on its social channels.
5. Limited table-service area. The dining room at the back has table service; the main bar room operates as a traditional pub with bar-only ordering. Visitors expecting full table service in every room can be confused.

Who is The Spread Eagle Homerton best for?

The following lists pull together recurring themes from review data and our own visits.

✅ Sunday-roast lovers — vegan or otherwise — who want the most-photographed plant-based roast in London.
✅ Vegan-pub fans who want the format, not just the food.
✅ East-London locals looking for a proper local that is also fully animal-free.
✅ Dog owners looking for a relaxed, well-equipped welcome.
✅ Pub-quiz teams who can field three on a Tuesday.
✅ Mixed groups with a single vegan member who has been left to one side by previous pub plans.

⚠️ Monday or weekday-lunch visitors will find the pub closed — plan a Tue–Sun visit.
⚠️ Diners chasing fine-dining theatre should look at Plates Shoreditch or Gauthier Soho.
⚠️ Quiet-restaurant lovers should avoid Friday and Saturday after 8pm.
⚠️ Visitors who associate pubs with steak and dairy butter will need to recalibrate — the format here is firmly different.

How it compares to other London vegan venues

The Spread Eagle plays a different game from every other London vegan venue. It is not a restaurant, it is a pub — and it is the only pub in this comparison. For drinkers, Sunday-roast fans and dog walkers, nothing in the comparison table competes.

How to book and insider tips

Bookings for Sunday roast and weekend dinner are available via the pub’s website and via DesignMyNight. The bar accepts walk-ins at all opening hours. Group bookings of up to 24 can be made in the back dining room; whole-venue hires are available on quieter weeknights.

For the smoothest visit, our insider tips are:

1. Book Sunday roast a week ahead. The 1pm to 3pm window fills first; 12.30pm or 4pm are easier.
2. Order the aquafaba tequila sour. The drink the pub built its early reputation on; still the cocktail to order.
3. Ask the bar team about the cask line-up. The pub takes its beer programme seriously and the team is well-trained on what is on tap.
4. Sit in the back room for dinner, the front room for the bar experience. The two rooms have different vibes; both are good.
5. Bring your dog on Sunday. Water bowls, soft staff welcome, relaxed crowd — one of the most genuinely dog-friendly atmospheres in Hackney.
6. Try the Tuesday quiz at least once. Prizes include a Sunday roast for two and a brewery tour at Pillars Walthamstow.
7. Sign up for the residency newsletter. A heads-up when a new kitchen residency is starting is the best way to track menu changes.

The Spread Eagle Homerton London review: 10 FAQs

1. Where exactly is The Spread Eagle in Homerton and is the vegan pub easy to find?
The Spread Eagle is at 224 Homerton High Street, London E9 6AS. The vegan pub is one minute’s walk from Homerton Overground station on the corner of Homerton High Street and Marsh Hill.

2. Is The Spread Eagle Homerton fully vegan, including the drinks and the building?
The Spread Eagle in Homerton is fully vegan — the food, beer, wine, cocktails and even the furniture, glues and cleaning products at this Hackney vegan pub are all animal-free.

3. What is the must-try Sunday roast at The Spread Eagle Homerton?
The must-try Sunday roast at The Spread Eagle in Homerton is built around a herb-stuffed seitan-and-mushroom centrepiece with roast potatoes, vegan Yorkshire pudding and a slow-cooked onion gravy at this East-London vegan pub.

4. Can I book a table at The Spread Eagle Homerton in advance?
Yes — The Spread Eagle in Homerton takes bookings via its website and DesignMyNight for Sunday roast and weekend dinner, and walk-ins are welcome at the bar of the Hackney vegan pub.

5. How much does a meal cost at The Spread Eagle Homerton?
A meal at The Spread Eagle in Homerton costs roughly £10 to £18 for drinks and snacks and £28 to £42 per head for dinner, with the signature Sunday roast at £18.50 at this East-London vegan pub.

6. Is The Spread Eagle Homerton dog-friendly and child-friendly?
Yes — The Spread Eagle in Homerton welcomes well-behaved dogs on lead with water bowls provided and children with a parent present until 8pm at this East-London vegan pub.

7. What are the opening hours of The Spread Eagle Homerton?
The Spread Eagle in Homerton opens Tue–Thu 4pm–11pm, Fri 12pm–midnight, Sat 12pm–midnight and Sun 12pm–10pm, with the vegan pub closed on Monday.

8. What kind of beer is served at The Spread Eagle Homerton vegan pub?
The Spread Eagle in Homerton serves six rotating cask lines and ten kegs, all fully vegan with no isinglass, from independent London breweries including Pillars, Hammerton, Beavertown and Howling Hops.

9. Does The Spread Eagle Homerton host events like quizzes and live music?
Yes — The Spread Eagle in Homerton runs a Tuesday pub quiz, Thursday vinyl nights and occasional live music sessions at this East-London vegan pub.

10. What is the London Reviews verdict on The Spread Eagle Homerton compared with other vegan venues?
The London Reviews verdict on The Spread Eagle in Homerton is that it is the most complete vegan pub in the United Kingdom, scoring 4.6 out of 5 — the right answer for any reader who wants a proper pub experience that is also fully animal-free.

London Reviews verdict

The Spread Eagle is one of those rare London venues that is exactly what it set out to be. Eight years on from the Veganuary launch, the late-Victorian bones are intact, the beer programme is the most ambitious in vegan London, the Sunday roast is the most-photographed plant-based roast in the country, and the room still feels like a pub. The kitchen residency programme keeps the food side from going stale; the team keeps the welcome warm.

The criticisms are real but small: a Monday closure, a Sunday queue without a booking, a Saturday-night decibel level. None of them undermines the core experience. What The Spread Eagle offers is a working vegan pub at the level you have wished a vegan pub would reach — and almost none of the imitators have.

The London Reviews score is 4.6 out of 5. Highly recommended for Sunday roasts, vegan pub nights, dog-friendly afternoons, after-work pints and any mixed group with one vegan diner. Less obviously suited to a quiet candlelit dinner — try Itadaki Zen King’s Cross or Plates Shoreditch for that. But for a proper London pub that happens to be fully animal-free, this is the venue.

Related London Reviews

If this Spread Eagle Homerton London review was useful, our other London vegan and vegetarian reviews and our wider London dining coverage will be too:

• 222 Vegan Cuisine Fulham — London review
• Ethos Fitzrovia — London review
• The Vurger Co Shoreditch — London review
• Itadaki Zen King’s Cross — London review
• Mildred’s Soho — London review
• Plates Shoreditch — London review
• Gauthier Soho — London review
• Holy Carrot — London review
• The Gate Hammersmith — London review
• Mallow Borough Market — London review
• Stem & Glory Barbican — London review
• Tibits Heddon Street — London review
• Farmacy Notting Hill — London review
• Tofu Vegan Islington — London review

Summary rating table