Welsh pub wins PETA Vegan Food Award
Stephen Price
An award-winning Welsh pub which has an entirely-vegan menu has picked up another accolade today from animal rights charity PETA.
From creamy dairy-free camembert to sensational vegan doner cooked on a spit, the winners of PETA’s 2025 Vegan Food Awards illustrate that innovation and demand for vegan foods continues to soar, disproving the meat lobby’s false narrative about the state of the vegan food market.
Picking up the award for Best Vegan Chicken is fully vegan Cwmbran-based pub The Queen Inn for its spicy and tender Cajun Ch*cken Wings. The morish wings are served with buttery mash, corn on the cob, and ranch.
The Queen Inn in Cwmbran became fully plant based two years ago when it removed animal products from its menu for Veganuary 2022.
Two years later, it has been named the fourth best plant-based restaurant in the world and the best in Europe by vegan guide, Happy Cow.
The Queen Inn
Menu items include gourmet versions of pub classics like f*sh and ch*ps and ch*cken and b*con pie.
“Most of our customers are animal-eaters who want a cruelty free way of eating their favourite pub meals,” Edwards told Plant Based News.
“We also get big parties with just a few vegans, who would usually go to non-vegan places where the token vegan will have a disappointing meal.”
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For those who prefer vegetable-based food, The Queen Inn serves dishes like Cauliflower steak, Fable shiitake mushroom pie, and Chana masala.
“We always find that animal-eaters are pleasantly surprised at the quality of the meals,” said Edwards. “They realise that plant-based dishes don’t always taste like cardboard.”
“The future of food”
Family-owned Glebe Farm takes top honours this year in the Best Milk category for its smooth and rich PureOaty Tea-rrific Oat milk, which is made with oats from British farms and perfect with a cup of tea.
Comedian Romesh Ranganathan’s collaboration with Coughlan’s Bakery, the moreish Ranga Yum Yum, stole the show for best pastry. The competition was sizzling this year for Best Vegan Steak, and Aldi’s Ultimate No Beef Flank Steak led the pack as a succulent, premium option at an affordable price.
Other winners include the Mushroom Bourguignon from Canterbury’s rock n’ roll bar The Lady Luck for Best Pie; UnMEAT’s savoury and protein-packed Tuna in Water for Best Vegan Fish; the eco-minded and allergy-friendly Fetcha Chocolates for Best Chocolate; and Caffè Nero’s sensational Apple Crumble & Custard Tart for Best Dessert.
Rounding out the awards are Jay & Joy (Best Vegan Cheese), Pizza Express (Best Pizza), GBD Doner (Best Kebab), Lidl (Best Pasta), Pipp & Co (Best Doughnut), BEAR (Best Ice Cream), and Soph’s Plant Kitchen by Sophie Waplington (Best Cookbook).
PETA Vice President of Vegan Corporate Projects Dawn Carr said: “The future of food is vegan. As more people seek out flavourful foods that are kind to animals, their bodies, and the planet, businesses are responding with exciting and delicious animal-free fare.
“Whether dining in or out, PETA’s winners show how easy and delicious it is to upgrade to vegan foods.”
As well as being kinder to animals, PETA notes that vegan foods have a smaller carbon footprint, while the meat and dairy industries are top producers of the greenhouse gases that contribute to the climate catastrophe.
Eating vegan also lowers a person’s risk of developing heart disease and certain types of cancer.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – points out that Every Animal is Someone and offers free vegan starter kits for anyone looking to make the switch.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
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Whilst PETA claims that vegan foods have a smaller carbon footprint it should be noted that the soya bean paste that makes fake chicken wings are grown on land felled of the amazon rain forest, then imported and the buttery mash served along side, contains no butter as coconut oil from Indonesia is used instead.
Aren’t soybeans chiefly grown and exported for cattle feed and the benefit of the meat industry? And the majority of high street banks finance that industry and thus deforestation as well…
It’s not just a PETA claim. It is pretty well established that plant crop are responsible for several times fewer CO2 emissions than meat, sometimes even orders of magnitude fewer. Soya beans are grown in lots of laces, and, yes, a lot are from Brazil. And you need to take into account the environmental impact of the land use when working out emissions. But the overall claim is correct. To deny that is to deny science, and reality