01Ubud's plant-based scene
Ubud's wellness-and-yoga culture (see our wellness guide) has pulled a genuinely strong vegetarian and vegan restaurant scene along with it — multi-course plant-based menus, raw food cafes and health-focused spots are dense enough here that avoiding meat entirely for a week is easy rather than limiting, a rarity in most parts of the world.
02Canggu's growing scene
Canggu has developed its own solid plant-based offering too, generally leaning more toward smoothie bowls, health cafes and casual plant-based fast-casual spots than Ubud's more elaborate multi-course dining, fitting the area's broader surf-and-nomad café culture.
03Traditional Balinese vegetarian options
Balinese cuisine itself (see our cuisine guide) includes plenty of naturally vegetable-forward dishes — tempeh and tofu preparations, gado-gado (mixed vegetables with peanut sauce), and various vegetable curries — meaning a plant-based diet isn't limited to Western-style vegan cafes if you're happy to seek these out at local warungs too.
04What to watch for
Fish sauce, shrimp paste (terasi) and other seafood-derived ingredients show up in a surprising number of Indonesian dishes that otherwise look entirely vegetarian, particularly in sambal and some vegetable dishes at local warungs. If you're strict about this, it's worth asking directly ("tanpa terasi/kecap ikan") rather than assuming a vegetable-looking dish is automatically free of animal products.
05Practical tips
- Dedicated vegan/vegetarian restaurants clearly label their menus and are the most reliable option if you're strict about ingredients.
- Most tourist-facing restaurants across South Bali and Ubud now handle vegetarian and vegan requests comfortably, even if it's not their core menu.
- Warungs vary more — simpler, more direct communication about what you can't eat gets better results than assuming a menu description is complete.