Vegetarian and vegan food in Puerto Princesa
There is exactly one true vegetarian restaurant in this city and you should build your week around its opening hours. Ima's Gulay Bar, 46 Fernandez Street, rates 4.4/5 from about 247 reviews and ranks #13 of 240, at ₱150–350 a head, with vegan and gluten-free options flagged. The hours are the catch: Sun–Thu 11:00–21:00, Friday closes 15:00, Saturday opens 18:30. Beyond Ima's, KaLui and Badjao both do excellent coconut-milk vegetable dishes and will assemble meat-free sets on request — but chaolong broth is beef, and that rules out the city's cheapest good meal.
One restaurant, and a lot of asking nicely
Puerto Princesa is a seafood city in a country whose default protein is pork. Vegetarians eat perfectly well here with a little planning; strict vegans work harder than they would in Manila or Cebu.
Ima's Gulay Bar — also listed as Ima's Vegetarian Restaurant — is the anchor and effectively the whole dedicated scene. It is a single-operator kitchen at 46 Fernandez Street, a short walk off Rizal Avenue, doing bean burritos, vegetable stir-fries, vegetarian pizza and fresh juices, with vegan and gluten-free options flagged on its listings. Mains were historically ₱100–120 and the current band is ₱150–350 a head. Because one person cooks, service is slow and the food is homemade — those two facts are the same fact.
Outside Ima's, the play is the big seafood restaurants. KaLui and Badjao both do genuinely good coconut-milk vegetable dishes — eggplant in gata, lato sea grapes — and both will assemble a meat-free set if you ask when you book rather than when you sit down. Carinderias almost always have a vegetable pot, though it may have been cooked with pork stock or bagoong, so ask.
The one thing that is genuinely closed to you is the city's signature cheap meal. Chaolong broth is beef at every house, and asking for egg or vegetable noodles changes the noodles, not the soup. That is a real loss at ₱60–120 a bowl and there is no workaround.
Ima's Gulay Bar, in practice
Every realistic option, ranked
Sorted by how little explaining you have to do. Everything below the halfway mark involves a conversation with a kitchen.
| Where | What you can actually eat | Price | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ima's Gulay Bar 46 Fernandez Street · 4.4/5 from 247 reviews · #13 of 240 | The whole menu. Bean burritos, stir-fries, vegetarian pizza, juices, with vegan and gluten-free options flagged | ₱150–350 | WORTH IT |
| KaLui 369 Rizal Ave · closed Sundays · book ahead | Eggplant tempura, lato, coconut-milk vegetables, rice and pickles. They will build a meat-free set — ask when you book | ₱500–1,200 | WORTH IT |
| Badjao Seafront Abueg Road · cash only | Eggplant in coconut milk is the best vegetable dish in the building. Everything else on the menu swims | ₱500–900 | DEPENDS |
| Carinderias everywhere in the centre | There is nearly always a vegetable pot. Ask whether it was cooked with pork stock or bagoong before you point at it | ~₱100 | DEPENDS |
| Cafés and brunch rooms Gold Cup, NomNom, Mayad | Reliable for breakfast and snacks rather than a full meal — eggs, toast, cake, decent coffee at ₱150–295 | ₱150–300 | DEPENDS |
| Mall food courts Robinsons Place Palawan, SM City | The chains have a vegetable option or two and label them poorly. Air-conditioning and an ATM are the real draw | ₱150–300 | DEPENDS |
| Kinabuchs | Lato at ₱50–100, and very little else with conviction. This is a crocodile-and-tamilok room | ₱350–900 | SKIP |
| Chaolong houses | Not vegetarian. The broth is beef at every house, whatever noodles you order | ₱60–120 | SKIP |
| Vegan cooking class with yoga the only hands-on food experience in the city | A 5-hour class, and the single most vegan-specific thing bookable in Puerto Princesa | $165–183 | DEPENDS |
Ranked by effort rather than by quality. If you are here for two nights, the honest plan is Ima's once and KaLui once with a meat-free set arranged at the time of booking.
Five things that catch people out
None of these is anyone being difficult. They are all just how Filipino kitchens work, and knowing them in advance saves the conversation.
Every house, every bowl, no exceptions found. Ordering egg or vegetable noodles changes the noodles and not the soup. The city's best ₱60–120 meal is simply not available to you.
Fermented shrimp paste and pork broth are default seasonings in carinderia vegetable dishes. Ask may bagoong ba? and may baboy ba? before pointing at the pot — most cooks will tell you straight.
Friday closes 15:00 and Saturday does not open until 18:30. A Friday-evening arrival planning dinner at the only vegetarian house in the city is the single most common way to get this wrong.
Almost every grilled meat and much of the seafood is marinated in soy sauce, which is wheat-based here. Ask for it grilled plain — kitchens do it without complaint.
Chaolong's French bread and the banh mi at Viet Ville are wheat-and-rice-flour blends, not rice flour. If you are coeliac, the bread culture in this city is not for you.
Difficult, and the seafood is the way around it
Puerto Princesa has a Muslim community and three mosques, including Masjid Daawah about 2.5 km from the centre. It does not have much of a halal restaurant scene, and HalalTrip's own city guide says as much.
The guide's phrasing is that finding halal restaurants here will be somewhat difficult, which is a fair description. The one named option is Tangay Tarabidan Halal and Vegetarian Restaurant, which is TripAdvisor-listed and whose current status is unverified — this site will not publish it as open. Muslim-owned stalls are reported to cluster near the mosques and the public market; that is also unverified.
The practical play is that this is a seafood city, and seafood-heavy menus make pescatarian-halal eating straightforward. KaLui, Badjao and the Baywalk paluto stalls are all fish-first, and at a paluto stall you can watch the whole thing being cooked, which resolves most doubts. Carinderia pork is the thing to route around, and it is usually obvious in the pot.
Alcohol is easy to avoid — nothing here is cooked in it. The one thing to ask about is lard and pork stock in vegetable dishes and soups, which are common and rarely mentioned on a menu.
Accidentally one of the easier places in South-East Asia
Nobody here is catering for you, and it barely matters: the default Palawan meal is grilled fish, rice, kinilaw and fruit, and all four of those are naturally gluten-free.
Paluto is the best system for it in the whole city — you choose the fish, you choose grilled, and you watch it happen for ₱100–150 in cooking fees. Kinilaw at ₱150–350 is raw fish cured in vinegar and calamansi with nothing wheat-based near it. Lato at ₱50–100 and fresh fruit fill the rest of the plate.
The traps are two: soy-sauce marinades, which are wheat-based and appear on almost everything grilled by default, and the bread culture around chaolong and banh mi. Ask for grilled plain and skip the baguette and you have removed nearly all of the risk. Ima's flags gluten-free options on its listings and is the only venue in the city that does so explicitly — there is no dedicated gluten-free restaurant here.
The two things worth arranging in advance
Ima's does not take online bookings, but its hours are strange enough that confirming them is worth two minutes. The cooking class is the only genuinely bookable vegan product in the city.
Dietary questions, answered
Is there a vegetarian restaurant in Puerto Princesa?
One: Ima's Gulay Bar, also listed as Ima's Vegetarian Restaurant, at 46 Fernandez Street. It rates 4.4/5 from about 247 reviews, ranks #13 of 240, and costs ₱150–350 a head. Watch the hours — Sun–Thu 11:00–21:00, Friday closes 15:00, Saturday opens 18:30.
Can vegans eat well in Puerto Princesa?
With effort. Ima's, at ₱150–350 a head, flags vegan options and is the only place in the city that does. Beyond it you are asking kitchens to build around coconut-milk vegetables and rice, which KaLui and Badjao both do well. Strict vegans should expect to eat at Ima's more than once in a three-day trip.
Is chaolong vegetarian?
No. The broth is beef at every house in the city, and ordering egg or vegetable noodles does not change it. That rules out the city's best cheap meal at ₱60–120 a bowl, and there is no vegetarian version to ask for.
Why is Ima's closed on Friday evening?
The pattern — Friday closing at 15:00 and Saturday not opening until 18:30 — is the shape of a Sabbath-observing operation, most likely Adventist-run, though that is unverified. Whatever the reason, the hours are real and they are the single most useful thing on this page.
Is there halal food in Puerto Princesa?
Some, and it is difficult. The city has a Muslim community and three mosques including Masjid Daawah about 2.5 km from the centre, but HalalTrip's own guide says finding halal restaurants will be somewhat difficult. The one named option, Tangay Tarabidan, has an unverified current status.
Is it easy to eat gluten-free in Puerto Princesa?
Easier than most of South-East Asia, by accident. Grilled fish, rice, kinilaw at ₱150–350 and fruit are the default local meal and none of them contains wheat. The traps are soy-sauce marinades and the chaolong baguette culture. Ima's is the only venue that flags gluten-free explicitly.
What can vegetarians order at KaLui?
Eggplant tempura, lato sea grapes, coconut-milk vegetables, rice and pickles — most of a ₱795 set for two minus the seafood. Ask when you book rather than when you sit down; the kitchen runs two packed seatings a night and improvises better with notice. It is closed Sundays.
Are there vegan cooking classes in Puerto Princesa?
One, on GetYourGuide: a vegan cooking class with yoga at $165–183 for about 5 hours. It is the only hands-on food experience of any kind listed for this city — there is no general Filipino cooking class and no food tour either, verified across the platform in August 2026.