Our story
Sixty-two years,
kept in the family.
Hendersons is the UK’s longest-running vegetarian restaurant. It began with one woman in 1962, and it’s carried on today by her grandson — the same idea, a new room, sixty years on.
1962
Janet started it.
In 1962, Janet Henderson opened a vegetarian restaurant on Hanover Street in Edinburgh — long before anyone called it a movement. It grew into an institution: the salad table, the wine bar, the bistro. A whole city grew up eating there.
For decades it stayed in the family. Then, in 2020, the original Hanover Street site closed its doors. It could have ended there.
The UK’s longest-running vegetarian restaurant — and it began with Janet.
2021
Barrie brought
it back.
Janet’s grandson, Barrie, grew up in the business — joining at fourteen, working the organic bakery, the kitchen and the floor. He went away to cook in Germany and the Inner Hebrides, took a Master’s in hospitality, and came home.
In October 2021 he reopened Hendersons in Bruntsfield, opposite the Links — to keep his grandmother’s legacy alive. Many of the team who lost their jobs when Hanover Street closed came back to work in the new room.
In the kitchen
Anna leads
the cooking.
Head chef Anna came to Hendersons from Poland, with a real love of vegetarian and vegan cooking, fermenting and foraging. She heads out for wild mushrooms, cures and preserves through the year, and lets the season set the menu.
It’s cooking that carries the old idea forward — flavour first, provenance always, never preachy. We’ve worked hard to harmonise the old and the new, in the food as much as the room.
The record
Worn lightly,
earned honestly.
We don’t make much noise about the recognition — but it means something that a 62-year-old vegetarian restaurant is still being picked out today.
- MICHELIN Guide · Selected2024 & 2026
- Inspectors’ favourite new restaurantsMICHELIN
- Only veg restaurant in the GuideEdinburgh
- UK’s longest-running vegetarian restaurantSince 1962
The idea hasn’t changed since 1962: eat better, live better — and share it at the table.