Chicago loses four vegan, vegetarian restaurants in eight days
Chicago, awarded 2025's most vegan-friendly city in the United States, just suffered a quadruple gut punch with the loss of four plant-based restaurants in just eight days.
Across the city, Kitchen 17 in Avondale was first to close on Nov. 25, Native Foods in the Loop on Nov. 28, Chicago Raw in Streeterville on November 30, and then The Chicago Diner announced the closure of its Logan Square location on Dec. 1.
Kitchen 17
Located on the corner of Diversey Avenue and Rockwell Street in Avondale, Kitchen 17 made everything in-house and from scratch: vegan meats, cheeses, breads, sauces, and desserts.
Kitchen 17 became the home of the original vegan deep-dish pizza, shipping over twenty thousand frozen pies across the United States.
Woodland creatures were painted across its walls and menus, on-theme with "Sir Edwin Currentqueller," a painted royal woodchuck. The restaurant says he crafted the recipes that "a lucky human chef" spent years studying.
In over 12 years, Kitchen 17 relocated three times, with its final location in Avondale also including a community space called The Fallen Log.
The community quickly took to The Fallen Log, which hosted hundreds of shows with local and international bands, open mic nights, and benefit concerts. The space was frequently used by Save The Night, a volunteer collective that hosts accessible and COVID-cautious events. The collaboration created a refuge where people with disabilities could regularly have access to a safer space to enjoy a night out.
According to its online announcement by owner Jennie Plasterer, Kitchen 17 is "heading for a new adventure" and hopes "some aspects of Kitchen 17 might reappear in some form in the future."
Native Foods
In the Loop, blocks away from the bustling and lengthy Christkindlmarket lines, Native Foods also said goodbye.
This location at 218 S. Clark St. is the third and final Native Foods to close in Chicago, following the Hyde Park and Wicker Park spots in the past three years.
The plant-based chain from California still operates in Palm Springs and Colorado. In 2023, the downtown Chicago Native Foods became employee-owned by Senegalese native Dame Dia.
Native Foods served fast-casual vegan alternatives such as chicken wraps and burgers. But in Chicago, Dia also brought his roots to the table, offering a "taste of Senegal" from Yassa Chick'n to Jollof Rice.
The restaurant closed the same day the announcement was made on social media.
"Downtown Chicago has changed in ways that directly impacted us," Dia wrote online. "The closure of several nearby businesses and the major shift to work-from-home drastically reduced the foot traffic we rely on."
Chicago Raw
Four blocks from the Mag Mile on the corner of Dearborn and Huron streets lived Chicago Raw. Since 2009, Polly and Margo Gaza, mother and daughter, launched a completely raw vegan storefront, meaning all their ingredients were not cooked or heated above 104 to 108 degrees.
Juices and smoothies are easier to make raw, but Chicago Raw even offered raw vegan meatballs, tuna, ravioli, and more.
Although the storefront is closed, Chicago Raw posted online that they will "continue sharing our passion for nourishing, wholesome food at local markets, so please stay tuned."
The Chicago Diner
Meat-Free Since '83, the Chicago Diner is arguably one of the most well-known vegetarian restaurants in the city. On Dec. 1, the founders announced they had "made the difficult decision to close our Logan Square location."
Its original location on Halsted Street in Lakeview will remain open, and the company offered to transfer its Logan Square staff there.
The Diner offers endless vegan comfort classics, from burgers to biscuits and gravy, and is known for its award-winning vegan milkshakes.
As the Chicago Diner put it on its website, "critics, loan officers, and family members alike scoffed at the idea," when couple Mickey Hornick and Jo Kaucher opened the vegetarian restaurant over 40 years ago — decades before the diet and lifestyle became more mainstream in the 2010s.
Chatham's Soul Veg City was also born in the '80s and continues to cook plant-based soul food on the corner of 75th Street and Indiana Avenue.
Both beat the odds and paved the way for many more vegan restaurants to come.
Other vegan closures
Even before this streak, Chicago lost a handful of vegan restaurants throughout 2025.
The Black Vegan Restaurant in Little Village called it quits in October and is relocating to the suburbs.
"Since the ICE raids began, our sales have dropped dramatically," the restaurant posted on Instagram. The post went on to say that "most of our support comes from the same beautiful community now too afraid to come out."
Liberation Kitchen in the West Loop closed in June, and Woodlawn's Lynn's Chicago Pizza switched to catering only.
On November 3, Lynn's announced the tough call, saying the closure was "due to the current economy and financial challenges." The owners have also pivoted and launched handmade pasta kits at Lynn's Pasta Co.
Hundreds of people have flocked to the comment sections of these restaurants' announcements, including other vegan restaurants that say they too are struggling.
"We're totally dead today, and it's very difficult," Fancy Plants Cafe commented.
Meanwhile, "Why are Popular Plant-Based Restaurants Closing?" That's the title of a blog post written by Alice and Friends Vegan Kitchen, which brings Asian-inspired food to Oak Park and Edgewater.
Even with a surge in plant-based and vegan diets, they remain a small portion of the entire population.
"Many investors still see vegan restaurants as a trend, not a long-term investment. That makes it more difficult for places like Planta, or smaller businesses like us, to access the capital needed to grow safely. This is a big reason why we take the time to grow slowly," the blog post said.
PLANTA Queen, an upscale, all-vegan restaurant known for its sushi, filed for bankruptcy in May. The Chicago location is one of the eight that remain open.
"We've been asked many times why we don't open more locations or expand to other cities. The answer is simple: it's really hard to grow a vegan restaurant in today's market. Not because people don't care but because the economics still don't quite work in our favor," the Alice & Friends blog post said.
Chicago's vegetarian history
Although Chicago is historically known as the meatpacking capital, there is a lesser-known connection to the evolution of the vegetarian movement.
In 1889, the Chicago Vegetarian Society was founded by activist and health lecturer Carrica Le Favre.
In 1893, a vegetarian exhibit was included in the World's Columbian Exposition. By 1895, the Vegetarian Eating Club was born, hosting annual turkey-free Thanksgivings at the University of Chicago, according to the Vegan Museum.
The city's first vegetarian restaurant, called The Pure Food Lunch Room, opened in 1900 on Madison Street downtown.
Near the turn of the last century, two publications, the British Society's The Vegetarian Messenger and the Chicago Society's Vegetarian Magazine, worked to expose the dark side of slaughterhouses in the city — expanding the vegetarian movement into one about ethics as well as health.
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, published in 1905, exposed an even broader audience to the dangerous and unsanitary conditions of Chicago's meatpacking industry.
In more recent times, Kay Stepkin gained a massive following with her natural foods store The Bread Shop, which operated from 1971 to 1996 at the northwest corner of Halsted and Roscoe streets — the current location of the Beatnix vintage clothing shop.
The Bread Shop opened the same year the Union Stockyards closed.
"Back then, health foods were a holdover of hippie days, which to most people meant brown rice and beans," the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1991. "But Stepkin had a greater vision that she hoped would bring healthy eating to the gastronomic mainstream."
The Chicago Diner was founded by former employees of The Bread Shop, which was across the street from the Diner's original and remaining location.
Stepkin also produced a TV cooking series "Go Veggie! With Kay" and a biweekly column, "The Veggie Cook" for the Tribune.
Stepkin wrote that when she opened The Bread Shop, she thought it was Chicago's first vegetarian business, but she went on to learn all about Chicago's vegetarian history going back to the 19th century.
Stepkin went on to found The Vegan Museum, the world's first institution of its kind. It is located within the North Town Branch Chicago Public Library at 6800 N. Western Ave.
Even with the closures in 2025, there are still over 80 different restaurants across Chicagoland that serve vegan and vegetarian options.