Teresa Carles is touted as one of the best (and first) vegetarian restaurants in this jamon-loving city. They have been serving plant-based breakfasts, lunches and dinners since 1979, and true to the Spanish body clock, are open late, which means you have until 1130pm each day to get your fix of vegie tapas, satisfying salads, handmade pasta (including a gluten-free carbonara) and vegan Selva Negra, Black Forest cake. There’s a deli counter at the front of the restaurant for takeaway salads and juices, and a cosy, low-lit dining room with exposed brick walls and funky tartan-covered banquettes.

Mildreds is to vegetarians and vegans what the little black dress is to fashionistas: a timeless staple that will never let you down. With restaurants in Soho, Kings Cross, Camden and Dalston, you can get your fix of hearty global plant-based dishes at this self-proclaimed ‘home away from home’ across the British capital. Our pick? The Sri Lankan sweet potato curry followed by rhubarb polenta crumble.

Plant-based chef Matthew Kenney’s upscale vegan restaurant on LA’s hip Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice has a sleek, minimalist aesthetic with natural wines in the glass that debunks all those hippie, handwoven clichés of vegetarian restaurants. Come for brunch, lunch or dinner and don’t miss the cashew raclette, kimchi dumplings and coconut cream pie, which fans of his Sydney restaurant Alibi on Woolloomooloo Wharf may recognise.

A hip Melbourne icon by plant-based pin-up chef Shannon Martinez. This hipster’s paradise has a Latin flavour via classics such as an excellent tortilla served with a creamy garlic ‘aoili’, equally good patatas con romesco (fried potatoes with smoked capsicum sauce), crisp-crumbed pea croquettes or a hearty hominy and black bean Mexican soup crowned with crunchy chilli and lime-doused tortilla strips that are anything but orthodox.

One-Michelin-starred Nix in New York City’s Union Square is the fantastic result of chef-owner John Fraser’s belief that eating vegetarian or vegan should be a celebration, not a sacrifice. The pleasant, pared-back interior has a mod Scandi feel with bare wooden tables, hanging greenery and white-painted brick walls, so you can forget about any fanfare and focus all of your attention on the food. The signature dish is the tandoor bread with dips – simple enough, right?, until you swipe the warm, slightly charred, pillowy dough through the rich, punchy onion dip with pops of pickled cippolini.

This upscale Potts Point restaurant from chef-owner Brent Savage is at the helm of plant-based fine dining in Australia. The cosy, softly lit, bistro-style interior by Melbourne designer Pascal Gomes-McNabb continues the golden colour theme the name implies, and is an inviting spot to settle in for a five or seven-course vegetarian or vegan tasting menu that is led by ingredient. Start with ‘Pumpkin + Pepita + Wattleseed + Mulberry’ and finish with ‘Honeydew Sorbet + Yuzu Curd + Young Coconut + Peppermint’.

Voner understands that vegetarians just wanna have fun too, with their fast-food vegetarian doners (get it – Voner?). The voner plate comes with slices of marinated seitan ‘meat’ plus all the accoutrements you’d expect from your local kebab joint.

All-day restaurant Farmacy, in London’s plummy Notting Hill, is a clean-eating temple from Camilla Fayed, the daughter of Harrod’s owner Mohammed Al Fayed. There is a star-status to the plush interior that is perfectly curated to feel like a super-stylish living room with pistachio-coloured banquettes, pretty hanging plants and chic Scandi furniture. Food is healthy twists on comfort dishes that spans breakfast classics of buckwheat pancakes with coconut yoghurt to ‘earth bowls’, mushroom tacos, hearty salads, probiotic jars, ‘nice cream’ made from frozen bananas, and even superfood syringe shots for those in need.

Vegan fine-dining touched down in London with the arrival of young chef Kirk Haworth’s Shoreditch restaurant Plates, which he opened with his sister Keeley in 2018. Haworth has worked in some of the world’s top kitchens, including The French Laundry in Napa Valley and Sydney’s Quay, and is the son of Michelin-starred British chef Nigel Haworth – and he brings this fine-dining pedigree to his innovative East London fine-diner. Not only is meat off the menu, so are refined sugars, gluten, white table cloths, matching plates and fine-dining stuffiness. Haworth’s food is fun, intelligent, boundary pushing and lick-the-plate-clean delicious: gluten-free bread rolls come with a carrot and liquorice ‘butter’ and pot-roast cabbage with butter bean and oyster mushroom is a meaty, no-meat revelation.

Styled to evoke to golden era of Bombay’s jazz cafes in the 1930s, London’s Dishoom Indian restaurants have long been a hot favourite for out-of-the-box Indian that is neither neighbourhood nor takeaway. At the new Kensington outpost, the interior is highly styled to be dark and sexy, and while not strictly a vegan restaurant, there is a devoted vegan menu with excellent okra fries, vegetable samosa and gunpowder potatoes. A vegan breakfast is also served daily until 11.45am.

Industrial-chic Avant Garden is located in New York’s East Village with an outpost across the East River in Brooklyn. Both locations are spot on, from the smart-yet-cosy wine bar interior to the finessed vegan fare. Forget lentil burgers, a meal here consists of exquisite small plates that start with their signature ‘toast’ options – think artichoke puree with black truffle vinaigrette – to snack on with a glass of unfiltered Italian Col Fondo sparkling wine (it’s way better than Prosecco!), before you succumb to a brilliant scorched cauliflower with fried capers and toasted garlic, and vegan carbonara with house-made spaghetti.

And you thought hotdogs and weissbier were your only concern in Berlin? Think again, because the doughnuts from Brammibal’s vegan bakery (or ‘doughnuterie’, is that a thing?) have caused many an epiphany. Flavours include matcha, Frankfurter Kranz, salted caramel hazelnut and even an epic Beyond Meat doughnut cheeseburger.

Paperbark in Danks Street, Waterloo, is one of the newest vegie eateries on the Sydney scene. And what a welcome arrival it is. The mod-Australian menu (with sleek industrial interior to match) showcases native ingredients, small-scale producers and minimum-intervention wines. Mushrooms look unbelievably meaty, elegantly threaded onto skewers, while beetroot is paired with tart Davidson plum, and stunning pumpkin tostadas – served on a black tortilla topped with nasturtium and pink radish – belie the fact that this is a neighbourhood eatery and not a fine diner.

Chorizo and seafood-loving Portugal is certainly not known for its vegan culture or crepe scene, but a must-eat for anyone visiting the capital, Lisbon, is one of the outstanding crepes at Sama Sama. The whole-in-the-wall creperie and juice bar in the neighbourhood of Cais do Sodre specialises in vegetarian and vegan crepes, made to order while you stand on the street with an organic cider, green juice or health-boosting ginger shot. Vegetarian crepes come with a crispy, cheesy exoskeleton, while the vegan options are loaded with creative fillings, such as mushroom and jackfruit stroganoff.

It was a contentious move when Michelin-starred French chef Alain Passard gave his Paris fine-diner a plant-only makeover in 2001. But the risk paid off, and L’Arpege kept its Michelin stars and will go down forever in the gastronomic annals with its Jerusalem artichoke veloute and vegetable ravioli at the helm. Meat, fish and poultry has crept its way back into the menu, but L’Arpege remains one of the few plant-forward Michelin restaurants in the world. Produce is sourced from three farms with different soil terroir chosen for root veg, brassicas or herbs, and the tasting menu will set you back about $700 plus drinks for the privilege of trying some of this ‘best in show’ produce.