Vantra Vitao, London

The website for Vantra Vitao proclaims it to be a “healthy food restaurant, [using] as many organic and wholefood ingredients as possible”.

It recently moved to Oxford Street, the lower end, close to Tottenham Court Road station, surrounded by numerous chain stores offering cheap clothing, fast food and tourist souvenirs. A welcome addition to the currently somewhat limited healthy eating options in the West End.

We were warmly greeted on arrival at lunchtime by Marlon who explained the buffet of hot and cold dishes and recommended a mocktail, which topped with pomegranate seeds, slipped down a treat.

The buffet dishes tasted as good as they looked – given that flavours can sometimes be a challenge for vegan or vegetarian cooks.

There is a big selection too – ranging from interesting salad combinations through to hot dishes. Some signs telling us what the dishes were would have been helpful, but Marlon was only too happy to explain the dishes to us.

Dishes are not only vegan, but gluten and dairy-free too; refined flours and cane sugars or foods with artificial additives aren’t used either. As far as is possible only organic produce is used. It is ‘Living food’ and therefore kept in as natural a state as possible – served either raw or not heated above 48C.

Somewhat unusually, the buffet meals are priced according to weight, per 100g (excluding your plate or bowl, of course) and prices are very reasonable for a Central London location.

My companion and I both opted for deserts of cheesecake – mango and lime, and raspberry and chocolate respectively. Cheesecake never sounds like a healthy option to me, but I’ll take Vantra’s word for it and our plates were clean.

The restaurant has a rather laid-back, rustic slightly 1960s hippy, ethnic feel to it and our fellow “diners” seemed to be of varying ages and carrying rucksacks and shopping bags. Only one quibble – the “rustic” chairs appear to be made from tree trunks, so moving a chair requires a fair degree of heavy weight lifting, and are not all that comfortable!

Vantra Vitao is also open in the evenings for dinner with an à la carte menu. It’s certainly somewhere I’d return to for lunch or dinner.