Buddha Burgers Vegan Restaurant – Tel Aviv

Buddha Burgers is an eatery that, in our opinion, perfectly personifies the vegan lifestyle. While we find many vegan restaurants focus solely on the health advantages of a meatless diet, Buddha Burgers is different. It presents you with delicious meals, as your eyes dart around the walls looking at posters with “Meat is Murder” slogans.

There are 4 branches of Buddha Burgers, with two of them in Tel Aviv, one in Haifa and one in Ranana. For our single lunchtime visit, we went to the original restaurant in Tel Aviv on Yehuda HaLevy. We bypassed the pleasant-looking patio and went right into air-conditioned dining room.

Pleasant Patio

The place had quite the hippy-esque feel, and combined with its cramped entrance and seating area, might undoubtedly scare away some patrons. But if you’re able to deal with reduced personal space, the cruelty-free and ethically sourced food is absolutely delicious.

Had we been in a rush, we may have decided to grab a salad to go, choosing from the wide variety of toppings at the salad bar.

Fully stocked salad bar

For our meal, we tried the polenta fingers appetizer, which came with a tangy tartar sauce and side salad.

Tasty Polenta Fingers

With our appetites whetted for mouth-watering food, Ligeia ordered the butternut squash ravioli smothered in a creamy sage sauce, and Mindy opted for the restaurant’s namesake, the Buddha Burger, with its patty made from lentil sprouts, mushrooms and walnuts.

Butternut Squash Ravioli

The Restaurant’s Namesake: Buddha Burger

To finish off our fantastic lunch, we split the chocolate vanilla mousse. Our mouths still water when we remember the thick, velvety smooth spoonfuls of it. We’d fly back to Tel Aviv for the day just for another serving of that mousse!

The mousse didn’t last long!

It truly is unfortunate that it took us until our last day of our month-long visit to Israel to eat at Buddha Burgers. Had we checked out any of the locations earlier, we may have become daily patrons to make sure we tried everything on their vast menu.

Overall, we give Buddha Burgers two big thumbs up. Don’t miss eating here the next time you’re in Israel, even if you’re not vegan!