Every Vegan & Vegetarian at Hooters (2023)

Hooters is popularly known for its array of wings with various sauces and its “minimally clothed” waitresses. Plenty of people love to gather for meetings, birthdays, game night, and other celebrations It’s a fine restaurant for people who enjoy meat dishes containing poultry, seafood, beef, and pork. But for us Vegans and Vegetarians, it’s not the easiest place to get a decent meal from.

 After a thorough study of Hooters vegan options and nutritional information, and some questions posed to hooters corporate contacts, I’ve found some quite good vegetarian options, however their vegan options still remain extremely limited in most cases. To be honest, it is one of the worst places to visit as a vegan.

Vegetarian Options at Hooters:

• All the Salads if you request no meat & Bacon bits (sometimes they’re real at hooters)
• Quorn New “Boneless” Vegetarian Wings with below-mentioned sauces
•  Chocolate Mousse Cake
• Key Lime Pie
• Caramel Fudge cheesecake
• Curly Fries
• Big Dipper Fries
• Mac’n’Cheese
• Fried Pickles
• Veggie Burger
• Roasted Broccoli
• Roasted Mixed Vegetables
• Tater Tots
• All other Salad Dressings that don’t include Bacon Bits
• All other Desserts Hooters currently offers

Vegetarian Options can be more abundant than one may think. There are plenty of salads you can order as long as they tell them you don’t want the meat from them. For example, tell them to not put the Chicken on the chicken garden salad and chicken Caesar salad.

If one has room for dessert, there are plenty of treats to satisfy one’s sweet tooth. The chocolate mousse cake, key lime pie, and caramel fudge cheesecake are all vegetarian deserts

While it was difficult to find out, all the fried foods at Hooters are apparently both vegetarian & most of them are even vegan, as they generally use Peanut oil or Soybean oil in their fryers. They use common fryers, so cross contamination can occur, but they fry the foods at different times so it’s unlikely to occur.

Vegan Options at Hooters:

There are not too many vegetarian options at hooters, so you may wondering if Hooters has vegan options at all. Let’s find out!

• All Salads if ordered without meat/cheese/croutons/bacon-bits with a vegan dressing option mentioned below
• The Taco Salad is the best Salad Option for us vegans
• Teriyaki Wing Sauce
• Big Dipper Fries
• Tater Tots
• Curly Fries
• Roasted Broccoli (confirm, generally it’s vegan by default)
• Roasted Mixed Vegetables (confirm, generally it’s vegan by default)
• Lite Ranch & Lite Italian (confirm, generally vegan at most locations)
•  Balsamic Vinaigrette
•  Lime Vinaigrette

One particular salad is still quite plentiful even without meat or cheese. The taco salad contains iceberg lettuce, cabbage, pico de gallo, cilantro, and fresh guacamole to top it off. Hooters also serves it with tortilla chips and a lime vinaigrette, tangy to the taste. Pico de gallo makes the salad go even further with the salsa containing tomato, onion, serrano peppers, salt, and lime juice.

Another dish for Hooters vegan options is the Chili…well at some locations. Served traditionally, with onion, seasoning mix, green pepper, black beans, smoke marinade, breading mix, peppers, garlic, and kidney beans. Just tell them to hold the beef meat and broth, and make sure to order one of the Hooters vegan option sauces. Instead of cheese, the chili can be topped off with jalapenos, un-fried of course. At many locations they may not be able to make it vegan or vegetarian, so do not rely on this being an option in making your decision in going to a specific Hooters.

Studying menu option availability, deeply explaining orders, and substituting various dishes are needed for vegans to have something to consume besides beer and soft drinks when at Hooters. But with the effort you’ll probably be able to have a decent enough vegan meal to carry you to your next one.

So, are Hooters fried pickles vegan?

Unfortunately, that depends on the location and the particular Hooters vegan options. Jalapenos, pickles, and potatoes by themselves are vegan, but according to hooter’s nutritional information, the batter they use may have either egg and/or milk, and hooters corporate could not definitively tell me if they are vegan at all locations or not. They may be at some, but their wording and my research says it’s not a common occurrence if one at all.

This tells me they’re likely non-vegan, but simply vegetarian, in general judging by how common it is for those menu items at other similar restaurants to have dairy/eggs in them.

How is Hooters for a Vegan or Vegetarian?

Hooters is obviously not a great place for vegans to eat, or at least not the first option. If they left out milk and eggs in their batter, and/or butter in their crouton, or if they provided a dairy free cheese and made their typically vegetarian-only vegetable burger vegan, then hooters could provide a good meal for everyone, including us vegans.

Though it may not happen right away in due time the higher demand for vegan alternatives at restaurants will make being a vegan at Hooters much easier and satisfying than it is today.

As for Vegetarians, it’s pretty dang great already, you can get yourself what I’ve heard to be a tasty veggie burger, plenty of side options, and even healthier salad alternatives.

Hooters Veggie burger goes Vegan?

While this has still yet to happen as far as I’m aware of, the parent company of Hooters has made some partnerships with plant-based companies in 2019 and may start rolling out or testing some vegan alternatives in the coming years. We can only hope.

In 2021 they added another vegetarian option, Quorn-brand wings, but unfortunately they are not vegan either, so prospects are not looking too bright for a vegan burger, as they could have easily made the switch here or picked a vegan-friendly Quorn product rather than one that contains eggs.

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