The Vegan Chef Challenge returns to Manchester
During the month of May a number of Manchester restaurants will compete in the 2026 Vegan Chef Challenge. Each restaurant will feature one or more vegan dishes on its menu. These might be existing dishes or new experimental dishes developed for the competition. Customers will vote on which dishes stand out the most. Similar competitions take place in cities across the country.
Joan O’Brien is the president of the New Hampshire Animal Rights League, the group organizing Manchester’s Vegan Chef Challenge. She said last year’s Challenge, the first in Manchester, was an eye-opener for the city’s restaurant community.
“Last year was the inaugural challenge,” she said. “It was very successful. It was fun. It brought in a new customer base for the participating restaurants.” Even now, a year later, several of last year’s participating restaurants still have last year’s vegan dishes on their menus, she said. “That was the goal, to bring more vegan options to Manchester and show people that the food can be delicious, and the fact that they kept some of these dishes on their menus is proof of that, that there’s actually a demand for it. It’s been really, really good feedback.”
“[The Vegan Chef Challenge] is an event that was created by a national organization called Vegan Outreach,” O’Brien said, “and their goal is to raise awareness around vegan lifestyle. They host these challenges in cities across the country, including Manchester. The overall winner, the best overall in Manchester was Stashbox. They had a miso-glazed avocado dish, and their cashew cream gnocchi was outstanding. I’ve been looking through some of the things that diners said last year, and people said things like, ‘Delicious!’ and ‘We wouldn’t know it was vegan. I’m not someone who eats vegan. This is the best gnocchi I’ve ever had.’ — comments like that.”
The 2025 Vegan Chef Challenge in Manchester was a bit of a revelation for the city’s restaurant community, O’Brien said — first, that there is a demand for plant-based dishes, even in a traditionally food-conservative state like New Hampshire.
“I can’t confirm it yet,” O’Brien said, but I know that Manchester is attracting more young people, more young professionals, and those people are usually looking for healthier food, and more inventive, creative food.” The success of last year’s challenge is an indication of a change in Manchester’s food culture, O’Brien said, showing that Manchester can participate on a level with much bigger, more cosmopolitan cities in other parts of the country.
Another lesson O’Brien has taken from the success of last year’s Challenge is that a non-confrontational exposure to vegan cuisine is a gentle and persuasive way to change people’s conception of vegan food.
“I think that the whole [vegan] movement is realizing, is learning that most of us were not born vegan,” she said. “So you have to be welcoming and not judge people. And sometimes what happens is when people realize that they can still get delicious, satisfying food that happens to be meat-free, then they’re open to considering the other benefits of a vegan lifestyle. People have a lot of things in their lives that they’re trying to get done, and to think that, ‘Ugh! Now I have to change my whole diet!’ is daunting.”
“May will be a big month for going out to eat, for Mother’s Day and graduations,” O’Brien said. “So we do hope that those people who are going out will visit the participating restaurants, try some of these vegan offerings and see that we have some new players, some very talented chefs.”
2026 Vegan Chef Challenge
Manchester’s Vegan Chef Challenge will take place throughout May. For a list of participating restaurants, visit veganchefchallenge.org/manchester.
Featured photo: Jeremy Hart, co-owner of Stashbox, last year’s overall winner of the Vegan Chef Challenge, with his trophy, the coveted Golden Spatula.
