Recently, midway along Aungier Street, near Whitefriar Street Church, a shopfront promising “pure veg” Indian food appeared, adding to the multiplying crowd of grocery stores, deli counters, caterers, and even a sit-down restaurant that offer this cuisine in the city.
At these “pure veg” establishments, eggs, fish and meat are banished, but dairy products are still served.
And the answer to the sudden growth in Dublin businesses serving only vegetarian Indian food is simple: demand.
Indians observing strict vegetarian diets for religious or cultural reasons have grown to a critical mass where entrepreneurs feel they can sustain businesses anchored by their custom.
Plus, a rising number of people from other backgrounds who follow vegan or vegetarian diets for ethical or health reasons are also part of their clientele, say business owners.
But the phrase “pure vegetarian” when applied to Indian food means more than it sounds. To the uninitiated, the tagline is just dietary, but to those in the know, it drips with meaning.
Those unfamiliar with the term may see the appearance of “pure veg” Indian eateries in Dublin simply as further proof of the city’s growing diversity of cuisines.
Yet this is also a diet connected with discriminatory caste politics in India, complicating how some read these signs across this city’s foodscape.
Demand and supply
“We saw a need for a very long time,” says Sudhansh Verma, owner of the Mini India chain, and one of those contributing to the recent expansion in “pure veg” offerings.
For most of its first year in operation, a neon sign in the window of his deli and grocery store on Westmoreland Street in Dublin’s city centre told passersby that the food it sells is “Pure veg and vegan”.
The sign was taken down sometime last year. But Mini India is going strong.
Verma opened the Westmoreland Street shop in 2022, a second in Sandyford earlier this year, and there’s a third set to open in Limerick soon. In late August 2024, Verma launched Mini India Fine Dine, a sit-down restaurant in Cabinteely.
While there were many restaurants already offering vegetarian and vegan dishes, he hadn’t seen any restaurants that were offering “pure Indian” food, Verma says.
“In India, a lot of people don’t eat meat at all,” he says. Meanwhile, “parents were visiting their kids, grown-up kids, sons and daughters, in-laws, who have come here, and found it very difficult to go out and have something outside their house.”
Verma wasn’t alone in seeing this gap in the market. When Yash Jain and his partner Ashmita Bagdi, both strict vegetarians for religious reasons, moved to Dublin in 2018 they found very few eating-out options that fit both their dietary restrictions and taste for spicy food.
“The moment we landed, one of the biggest challenges we faced was there was no vegetarian food available outside, or something that we would enjoy eating, which was pure vegetarian where there is no cross-contamination of any sort with any meat,” says Jain.
Sometimes when ordering veg dishes from Indian restaurants, they found chunks of meat mixed in, Jain said. “That just scared us off in a way to try any options that would have both veg and non-veg. That gave us a thought that maybe it was something we should start ourselves.”
The pair launched Woww Foods in 2021, which now operates from a deli counter in the Pick & Pay on Parnell Street every evening.
Woww Foods serves “100% pure vegetarian food”.
“We follow a religion called Jainism, and it has a simple motto to it: Live and let live,” Jain says. “That’s essentially what we try to do with our food. We don’t see value in taking a life for a meal.”
Apart from brick-and-mortar establishments, other businesses with only a virtual presence also cater to “pure veg” seekers. Indian Dabbawala, a vegetarian catering business, offers monthly meal plans. Knife & Wife Food Studio offer strict vegetarian food delivery through a WhatsApp group.
More of us, more for us
When Louisa Moss moved to Dublin from Co. Meath in 1990, it was difficult to get vegetarian or vegan food, she says. Now, “in general it’s much easier to get catered for”.
Much of that growth has been in the past 10 years, says Moss, a member of the Vegan Society of Ireland.
The latest chapter of this larger story is the rise of “pure veg” Indian eateries.
While it means more choices for all, the main beneficiaries are Indians who observe strict forms of vegetarian diets and were forced to limit their eating out or ordering in until recently.
Medhha Mishrra has been a strict vegetarian her whole life.
When she first arrived in 2017, Mishrra found that Indian restaurants had veg options but did not feel comfortable with them. “I was always afraid of contamination, or how separated the veg and non-veg section are.”
“I’ve been to a few Indian restaurants where it’s written, in the naan section, that it contains eggs,” she says, “but when you double check with the waiter they say, ‘No, no, it’s just written like that, it doesn’t actually have eggs.’”
“Sometimes you just become doubtful whether to trust what’s written or go by what the people from the kitchen are saying,” she says.
“It’s good to know that we are having more purely vegetarian things,” Mishrra says about the new options.
For some years, if you wanted to eat Indian vegetarian food in a restaurant without meat, fish or egg dishes being cooked in the same kitchen, your options numbered only one.
Present-day Govinda’s, located on Middle Abbey Street in the city centre, has a 40-year history of different iterations and locations. It’s run by the Dublin International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON for short.
Praghosa Dasa, born Paul Murphy, co-founded Govinda’s restaurant with his wife Goloka Dasi, and said that they have always served food based on “ahimsa”, meaning non-violence in Sanskrit.
Dasa estimates that 60 percent of Govinda’s customers are non-vegetarian, and 40 percent are vegetarians or vegans, numbers that have been consistent over the years.
“Everything that we prepare in our restaurant, before we eat it, we offer it to Krishna. So we don’t taste before we do that,” he says. “So basically it’s done as an act of love.”
Aside from the vegetarianism promoted at Govinda’s by ISKCON devotees, and the “pure vegetarian” dietary rules observed by some Indians for religious reasons like the Jains, there are also regional identities within India, as well as caste identities, tied to why some Indians follow “pure vegetarian” diets.
The ingredients that are allowed or not allowed in these diets can vary widely. In addition to not eating meat, fish and eggs, some people don’t eat onions, garlic or even root vegetables.
Observances can go beyond ingredients, too. For some, a completely separate kitchen, or the use of separate vessels to cook and serve their food, are a must for it to be “pure”. For the stricter, the religious faith, the caste, or the food restrictions observed by the person cooking needs to align with their own.
These dietary rules, and their variations, do not map easily onto ideas about vegetarianism and veganism for animal welfare, environmental or health-related reasons, that may be more commonly understood among Dubliners.
The politics of “pure veg”
Aseem Hasnain and Abhilasha Srivastava, assistant professors in sociology and economics respectively at California State University, Fresno, have conducted research on the meaning, and the politics, of vegetarianism in India.
“That actually shocked me,” said Srivastava, about eateries and shops advertising as “pure veg” in Dublin, on a recent video call from Fresno.
“When you say ‘pure veg’ restaurants, the language itself is telling,” she says. “You can call your restaurant ‘vegetarian’, ‘vegan’ or something like that, but ‘pure veg’ is a language of caste, because caste is built on the idea of purity and pollution.”
Hasnain, also on the call, agrees. “Pure veg” is “a very, very clear indicator that this is a place which looks down upon meat.”
“It looks down upon anything that has to do with animal products, but not milk and ghee and butter, because Indian vegetarianism is lacto-vegetarianism,” he says.
“On the other side, I think if you are upper-middle caste and you see ‘pure veg’ you see ‘this is someone like me, this is someone like us’,” says Hasnain.
In a peer-reviewed article on caste and vegetarianism published in the journal Food and Foodways in September 2023, Hasnain and Srivastava write that “neither is India a vegetarian society nor is mainstream vegetarianism in contemporary India based on progressive ethics”.
Rather, vegetarianism in most parts of modern India “is the preference of only a minority of citizens belonging to ‘upper’ castes.” They say that it is also a “political ideology” that “aims to conserve the caste system and its attendant inequalities”.
All of the proprietors of “pure veg” food businesses interviewed for this article denied any connection between the food they offered and caste-related purity. They mentioned religious, health or ethical reasons for why they have chosen to serve “pure veg” food.
Jain of Woww Foods says that their motivation is singular: “to offer cruelty-free meals.”
For Dasa at Govinda’s, it’s connected to the ISKCON faith and reverence for the cow: “If you’re killing sentient beings, you cannot develop the quality of compassion.”
But centuries of caste oppression means that the words “pure veg” are loaded with meaning for some. Nithya Kothenmaril, a PhD researcher based in Dublin, is from a caste-oppressed community in India.
She has never eaten in a place that advertises itself as “pure vegetarian”. “I don’t go to such places because I know that such places are not for me,” she says.
“Basically, with the word ‘pure vegetarian’ itself, it’s not meant for the people considered as untouchable or impure,” she said.
More “us” and “them”?
The politics of vegetarianism that Hasnain and Srivastava have researched continues to be divisive in India.
In March 2024, Zomato, a popular food delivery service in India similar to Deliveroo or Just Eat, launched a dedicated “pure veg” fleet of delivery persons. They would only deliver food from a curated list of “pure veg” restaurants.
Facing criticism as casteist and divisive, the segregated service was discontinued by the company.
So far Dublin has not seen such diet-based divisions in its eateries but it is not unthinkable that “pure vegetarianism” could sow dischord even here. In 2022, Dublin Live reported that some Indian landlords in Dublin were refusing to rent rooms to other Indians who were meat-eaters.
It is still common to see rental ads specifying dietary rules for tenants on social media groups and messaging apps used by members of the Indian community in Dublin.
So says S. Harikrishnan, a postdoctoral researcher at Dublin City University who in 2020 published research on the Hindu community and the forms of Hinduism prevalent in Ireland.
“I’m on a few WhatsApp groups where I often see rooms advertised by Indians for other Indians, but one of the conditions would be ‘vegetarians only’,” Harikrishnan said.
“The politics of it doesn’t always translate,” he said.
People from outside of South Asia don’t necessarily understand the context, he said. “They see that as being similar to saying “no pets allowed”, for example.”
But the restriction doesn’t come from the same place at all, he says. “A person may not want pets in the house because they are allergic to cats or dog hair. Whereas vegetarianism comes from a place of politics. The politics of caste and class doesn’t always translate.”
Still, all owners of businesses serving “pure vegetarian” food we spoke to emphasised that all are welcome.
Jain, co-owner of Woww Foods, said he wished that everyone would give them a try and “realise that vegetarian food can be tasty as well and can fully satisfy your tastebuds and at same time serve a purpose”.
Come together over dinner
Dublin has always been a coddle pot of people with different culinary and religious traditions finding space for themselves within each other’s dietary restrictions and gastronomic desires.
Several strict vegetarians from India living in Dublin said that while they welcome the new “pure veg” eateries, they are also happy to be flexible and eat in establishments which serve non-vegetarian ingredients.
Dubliner Neeta Oswal Mulajker, who is a special needs assistant in a school, says that as a strict vegetarian, she is concerned about cross-contamination in her food and feels there could be more awareness in Ireland about the different dietary restrictions that some Indians follow.
But, “when I go out with my family or others in my social circle, we go out to mixed places because they want to eat non-veg”, Mulajker said.
Similarly, Indians in Dublin who are not vegetarians also make concessions to the beliefs of others in the community.
Some temples which serve as venues for Hindu festivals require only vegetarian food be served. This means that not all Hindus’ religious observances can be made welcome.
Rohit Dutta is a finance professional and one of the organisers of a Durga Puja celebration in Dublin, a Hindu festival popular in eastern India where eating meat or fish is part and parcel of the celebration for most.
The festival that Dutta helps to organise is held on the temple premises of the Vedic Hindu Cultural Centre Ireland where only vegetarian food is allowed.
Dutta says that “some people might not like that choice” but he understands that the temple “welcomes everybody so the food that is offered has to be acceptable by everybody”.
Sure, he would personally like one day during the multi-day celebrations where they could eat non-vegetarian food, Dutta said. “But yes, it’s in a temple and we have to cater to everybody’s sentiments.”
