East St Cafe, Restaurant and Bar

My partner and I were out for our final night visiting Nelson. Found ourselves enjoying the best meal yet! We had the ‘crumbed hot pot’ and ‘kissadeer’. Both meals were absolutely fantastic, the vibe and the staff were amazing. Wish we found this place earlier! See you again soon.

Vegan and amazing. Delicious food and super helpful staff. We ended up having all our meals in Nelson with them!
Vicky and Tejas run this place and are very helpful too. Our flight out of Nelson got cancelled after checking in and we were stuck for 8 hours. They graciously agreed to store our bags.

What can I say that a lot of others haven't already.

Well if your a carnivore but would like to know what all the fuss is about with vegan food then this is the place to good.

Absolutely delicious food. Soo well flavoured and great portion sizes.

I highly recommend the garbanzo fingers. They are like eating the softest most delicious cloud. Super dense and surprisingly heavy for what they are.

This is how vegetarian and vegan food should be.

This is the gold standard.

Incredible, we are just in Nelson for a short while and wanted to support a vegan business so we came for lunch and it was so good that we didn't want to chance our luck elsewhere so we came back for dinner and that was so good and there is still so much choice that we'll be back before we leave: 100 out of 10

Highly recommend this place for vegans and non-vegans too. They have a variety of cuisine on offer. Staff pretty helpful and ready with suggestions.

Excellent service, and food was damn good! Try the kissadear or beast from the east - will be back for more

Their vegan food is to die for (not literally, as no animals were harmed in the making of their food)
The beast from the east, was a perfect replacement for a beef burger, and can definitely recommend the fries

Had dinner here and was amazed by this outstanding vegan restaurant!
We had the garbanzo fingers, which were amazing, two of the burgers (10/10) and the falafel salad! So much verity, everything so colorful and delicious.
The only part which was a little less great for us was the disassembled cheesecake at the end, which was super delicious but not at all something resembling a cheesecake
All in all, highly recommend eating here

Love this place! Finally, a real Vegan/Plant Based restaurant and I do friends like the food here too. Delicious variety of starters, mains and desserts. Great wine and lovely hospitality! All my kids love it too!

TLDR: I hate to do it to a city's only vegan restaurant, but we literally could not finish our food, it was not good, nor fresh.

Food: we were so excited to find an all vegan restaurant in such a small town. Unfortunately, it became clear right away that the high ratings come from a lack of competition (or maybe they just had a bad day). However, we ordered coffee and a chai latte. The coffee was bitter and tasted old. We also ordered nachos, breakfast scramble, and chickpea fries. The nachos had a pool of grease in the bowl we've never experienced with nachos before making the entire bottom greasy and soggy. The "cheese" was quite bland and every ingredient tasted canned. The chickpea fries had no seasoning and looked great but tasted like nothing, we tried one and left the rest. Lastly, the breakfast plate was just there. The tofu scramble did not have any liquid aminos, nutritional yeast, or black salt to make it taste "eggy". It just seems like tofu and turmeric with nothing else. Overall, very sad and we had to go get food elsewhere, leaving hungry after paying the bill.

Service: nice, but seemed very distracted. We visited after opening so we were one of only two tables, so it wasn't like they were busy. Service was average.

Atmosphere: a very cute interior that got our hopes up for the overall meal. Probably one of the nicer interiors for a vegan restaurant in all of NZ.

We sought out East St on our visit to Nelson and WOW! This wee place is up there as one of the best vegan cafes I’ve experienced. The food is awesome - we know this because we had lunch here then came back for dinner! The owners are lovely and the staff fantastic! Highly recommend even for non vegans - you will love the food because it’s tasty and great!

Our favourite spot in nelson. Awesome homely food for veg/vegan. Super kind staff, fast service, dog welcoming; what more could you ask for!?

I got the banana bread, my partner had the Sam I Am sandwich and fries. Both of our meals phenomenal. Especially my partners sandwich. It was bursting with savoury flavors. Best meals we’ve had in a while. Thanks, from Canada

I love the team here, whether it's for a gig or afternoon service they always have a smile on their faces

This cafe really went the extra mile to make tables available in the court yard for those who needed to dine outside. They didn't discriminate nor buy into the apartheid to divide NZ. Visited Jan 19/22

I always enjoy visiting your eatery. Great food, great location & great service. I highly recommend you stop in and eat here, very enjoyable.

My favourite restaurant in the world? I'm so proud of East St for everything you do. The best food ever and beautiful kind owners who really care about our community, people and animals. Every single time I visit I can say it was the best meal ever. Fresh, delicious food, perfect portions, amazing flavours, lovely staff. I'm a regular customer and tell everyone to go here. Thank you V & T for everything you do and for the kind, beautiful, hardworking, talented people you are ️️

Friendly staff, menu options seemed limited for me. Generous portion size. The vegan chicken took away from the salad, would have been good without it. I am a meat eater. The place was packed. 80's decor. Nice ambient music.

Vegan friendly cafe/restaurant. Friendly staff and a decent menu of vegan dishes. Good pricing as well.

Great decor and really great vegetarian food. We just had to try this place while in Nelson. We ordered the Buffalo JCP and Garbanzo fingers as we has recently eaten at the markets. The dishes were a great combo. Also enjoyed our rose lemonade and passionfruit and feijoa juice. As we left.the meals at the other tables, made this one of the 'must do again' places.