Plates: UK's first vegan Michelin-starred restaurant is 'clever, brilliant fun'

Plates in Shoreditch, east London, has become the first plant-based restaurant in the UK to earn a coveted Michelin star.

The kitchen is helmed by Kirk Haworth, winner of last year's "Great British Menu". A few months after competing on the TV show, the Blackburn-born chef – who cut his teeth at The French Laundry in California – set up the vegan eatery with his sister, Keeley. His passion for plant-based food began back in 2014 when he overhauled his diet following a Lyme disease diagnosis.

With just 25 covers the restaurant is small and the phone "always engaged", said The Guardian. You won't find the word "vegan" anywhere on the menu and there's a surprising absence of fake meat; instead, meat and fish are "completely swapped out" for vegetable alternatives. The lasagne, for example, "feels like lasagne, except that it is made with mung and urad beans" and served with a "thumb of cucumber".

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In keeping with "Michelin tradition", "plumes of dry ice fog hover over some dishes" and there are "at-table sauce pouring performances". Some of the textures – like the "teeth-squeaking puffed rice" – can feel "overwhelming", and the price – £90 for a tasting offer without a drink – feels a "little mighty for vegetables". Still, it's a "generous" menu, and there are enough diners filling the "mustard banquettes" to remind you that Plates is very much a "destination".

What Haworth has achieved here is "beyond impressive", said Adam Kay in The Sunday Times. It becomes clear pretty quickly that "you won't miss meat here". Japanese tomatoes are served with some "basilly shiso" and a "lovely light ricotta", and the flaky bread appears "without a curl of Lurpak in sight". "Would it have been better with real butter? Probably a bit. Does it matter? Probably not."

It is the desserts, though, where the restaurant "really comes into its own". Apricots are perfectly complemented by an "absurdly fluffy" custard, while the best is saved until last: a "deceptively technical, gorgeous chocolate cake, its edges perfectly chamfered by the sourness of cherry, cooled with a coconut ice cream you'd be hard pressed to describe as vegan-tasting".

"Dubious" of claims that a vegan diet is "planet-saving" and "tired of the moralising" against carnivores, I "harrumphed" at Plates' Michelin award, said William Sitwell in The Telegraph. But I soon found the menu is peppered with "miracles" like the "sourdough with the texture and flavour of the finest croissant" and a "wonderful little rice pudding ice cream".

Unlike the heavy tasting menus at most upmarket fine dining restaurants, I left "light of tummy". "So, of course, I get it. And so should you. Who cares that it's vegan when it's just clever, brilliant fun?"