Eating vegan and gluten-free in Lisbon is easy with three menu checks. At Aura, every cold-pressed juice and the SUNNY SHOT are vegan and labelled gluten-free; all five smoothies are labelled gluten-free, and BLISS, CREATIVITY and ENERGY can be vegan; four of six foods are vegan.
The three checks: "veggie" is not vegan, wellness menus have their own blind spots, and gluten hides beyond bread. RADIANCE can never be vegan, because it contains collagen; three of the four vegan food options are labelled gluten-free too.
Vegan breakfast in Lisbon
Our Campo de Ourique flagship serves a vegan breakfast Tuesday–Friday from 09:00 and Saturday from 10:00: Cacao Peanut Chia Pudding (€7.50) and Energy Balls (€2 each), cold-pressed juices from €5.50, and BLISS, CREATIVITY or ENERGY made with plant protein (€10); the counter inside MVMT Studio serves the juices and smoothies, plus Cacao Peanut Chia Pudding and Energy Balls, Monday–Friday from 08:30 and Saturday–Sunday from 09:30; the counter inside Fine Club serves the same, Monday–Wednesday from 07:30, Thursday from 10:00, Friday from 07:30 and Saturday–Sunday from 09:00. For what makes a breakfast healthy in the first place, see our guide to a healthy breakfast in Lisbon.
Lisbon is genuinely vegan-friendly, by European standards
Portugal made a vegetarian option a legal requirement in every public canteen — schools, universities, hospitals, prisons — with Law 11/2017, born from a citizens' petition, and Lisbon's restaurant scene has moved further still: fully plant-based kitchens, dedicated gluten-free bakeries and functional cafés are now normal across the city. Finding somewhere to eat is not the problem.
The traditional table is another matter. Portuguese pastry is built on egg yolks and wheat flour, the bread basket arrives unasked, and classic dishes lean on salt cod, cheese and cured pork. Eating vegan or gluten-free in Lisbon is rarely about finding the right neighbourhood — it is about reading the menu in front of you correctly.
Three checks tell you what any menu actually is
Run them anywhere in the city, not just here.
First: "veggie" is not vegan. Vegetarian dishes here routinely include eggs, cheese, butter and honey, so if a menu does not say vegan explicitly, ask before ordering.
Second: wellness menus have their own blind spots. Collagen is always animal-derived — bovine or marine, since no plant produces it — so any beauty-focused blend deserves a question. Whey protein is dairy, and it is the default powder in many blenders. Honey hides in granola, energy bars and dressings. The word "wellness" on a menu is not a dietary flag, however good it looks on the sign.
Third: gluten goes beyond bread.Standard oats carry a genuine cross-contamination risk with wheat, soy sauce is brewed from it, and spelt — often marketed as an ancient, healthier flour — is still wheat. If you are coeliac rather than gluten-sensitive, preparation matters too: shared blenders and counters are a fair question, and an honest café will answer it precisely instead of waving it away. We are a shared kitchen, not a dedicated gluten-free facility, so "gluten-free" here means no gluten-containing ingredient in the recipe — genuinely useful if you are gluten-sensitive, but not the strict cross-contamination guarantee a coeliac needs. Ask us, and we will tell you exactly that.
Every Aura juice and the SUNNY SHOT are vegan and labelled gluten-free
Every cold-pressed juice we make — RAW, BALANCE, SERENITY and VIBRANCE, from €5.50 — plus the SUNNY SHOT (€4) is vegan and labelled gluten-free. Not by reformulation, but by composition: the bottles contain pressed fruit, vegetables and roots, and nothing else. RAW is spinach, cucumber, celery, lemon, ginger and microgreens; the SUNNY SHOT is ginger, lemon, orange and turmeric. IGNITE, the vegetable-led opener of our juice cleanse days (it is only sold inside the juice cleanse), is the same story: beetroot, cucumber, lime, celery and ginger. Full ingredient lists live, bottle by bottle, on our cold-pressed juices and shots menu.
The smoothies are all labelled gluten-free, but not all vegan
This is where honesty earns its keep. All five smoothies (€9 to €11) are labelled gluten-free. They are not all vegan.
RADIANCE (€9) contains collagen, and collagen is animal-derived — there is no vegan version of the molecule, only plant blends marketed as collagen support. It is the working ingredient of the drink, so we will not pretend it can be swapped out. If you are vegan, RADIANCE is simply not your smoothie.
BLISS and ENERGY are built on fruit, almond milk and our homemade coconut whipped cream, CREATIVITY on our homemade coconut ice cream (coconut milk, cashew butter, maple syrup and sea salt): coconut, not dairy, in all three. Each comes with a choice of whey or plant-based protein: order the plant option and all three are vegan. JOY is left out: it also contains vitamin D, which is not always vegan (vitamin D3 is commonly made from lanolin, from sheep's wool).
Four of six food options are vegan
Four of our six food options are vegan: Energy Balls (€2 each), Crunchy Salad (€8.50), Coconut Lentil Curry (€8.50) and Cacao Peanut Chia Pudding (€7.50). The first three are also labelled gluten-free. The chia pudding is made with oat milk, and oats are the cross-contamination risk from the third check, so if you avoid gluten, ask us about it before you order.
The other two we label precisely rather than optimistically. Overnight Oats (€7) and Power Bars (€3.50) are vegetarian — the bars contain honey — and because both are built on standard oats, we do not flag them gluten-free. Every dietary flag sits on the product pages of our food and bites menu.
Ordering vegan or gluten-free here is one sentence at the counter
Say it at the counter — that is genuinely the whole system. The team swaps whey for plant protein on any smoothie, and every product we sell publishes its complete ingredient list, because transparency is the brand's founding habit, not a compliance exercise.
You will find us at R. Domingos Sequeira 11A in Campo de Ourique (Tuesday to Friday, 09:00 to 16:00; Saturday, 10:00 to 14:00), inside MVMT Studio in Santos, inside Fine Club in Campolide, and across Lisbon on Uber Eats — and for allergen detail and more dietary answers, our FAQ on dietary options covers the rest. Run the three checks on any menu in this city and you will eat well. Run them on ours and there is nothing left to find — that was always the point.