Vegan Restaurants in Cathedral Hill: J. Selby's and the Best Plant-Based Dining in St. Paul

Cathedral Hill: St. Paul's Vegan Pilgrimage Destination

Cathedral Hill is a Victorian-era residential neighborhood on the western edge of St. Paul, perched between Summit Avenue and Selby Avenue. It is not a dining district in the conventional sense — there is no strip of restaurants, no food hall, no cluster of bars. What Cathedral Hill has is J. Selby's, and J. Selby's is enough.

For vegans making a trip into St. Paul for a meal, this neighborhood is a pilgrimage. J. Selby's has become the most celebrated fully vegan restaurant in the Twin Cities — the kind of place that appears in every regional guide, every best-of list, and every conversation about what plant-based dining can look like when someone commits to it completely.

The surrounding neighborhood is worth the drive on its own. Cathedral Hill sits just south of Summit Avenue, one of the most architecturally stunning residential streets in the Midwest — a corridor of Victorian mansions, stone churches, and mature elm trees that explains why this neighborhood has the name it does. Combine dinner at J. Selby's with a walk along Summit Avenue and you have one of the better St. Paul evenings available.

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J. Selby's — The Twin Cities' Premier Fully Vegan Restaurant

169 Victoria St N, Saint Paul, MN 55104 | $$ | American Comfort Food / Fast Casual (651) 222-3263 | jselbys.com Wed-Sat: 11am-8pm | Sun: 10am-7pm (Brunch) | Closed Mon-Tue

The premise at J. Selby's is deceptively simple: take American comfort food — the stuff vegans are told they cannot have — and make it without compromise. Burgers, wings, Crunchwraps, shakes, brunch burritos. All of it 100% plant-based, all of it genuinely good, none of it apologetic about what it is.

This is not a restaurant that leads with substitution language or decorates its menu with asterisks and explanatory notes about what has been removed. J. Selby's leads with the food. The Crunchwrap is a Crunchwrap. The burger is a burger. The wings are wings. The restaurant's confidence in its own product is part of what has made it the default answer whenever someone in the Twin Cities asks where a skeptic should go to understand vegan food.

What to Order at J. Selby's

The Crunchwrap — The menu anchor. Vegan taco meat in a griddled, pressed flour tortilla with all the expected components inside. The outside achieves actual crispiness; the inside holds together correctly. This is the dish that made J. Selby's famous and it earns that reputation every time. Order one on your first visit. Order it again on your second.

Lion's Mane Mushroom Wings — Crispy fried lion's mane mushroom in your choice of sauce. The texture is genuinely wing-like in the best possible way — substantial, satisfying crunch, real bite. This is the best bar snack in Cathedral Hill and one of the better appetizers in St. Paul regardless of dietary preference. Order it alongside anything else.

Dirty Double Burger — Two patties, secret sauce, stacked and properly messy in exactly the way a good burger should be. The plant-based patty holds up structurally and delivers on flavor. This is a useful test for anyone who arrives at J. Selby's skeptical about vegan burgers — it is a direct answer to the skepticism.

Frostbite Shake — Thick dairy-free shakes with mix-ins. The cookie dough version is the right call. Order it as dessert or alongside your meal; there is no wrong approach. J. Selby's does dairy-free shakes correctly, which means actually thick, which means actually satisfying.

Breakfast Burrito (Weekend Brunch) — On Sundays, J. Selby's opens at 10am for brunch service. The breakfast burrito is hearty, filling, and substantial enough to count as a real meal. The brunch also offers bottomless mimosas, which is a specific pleasure that fully vegan restaurants rarely deliver and J. Selby's does without reservation. Sunday brunch here is one of the better weekend plans available in St. Paul.

Practical Notes

J. Selby's does not take reservations. Weekend evenings, particularly Friday and Saturday, can have a wait — the dining room is small and the restaurant is popular. Arriving at lunch on a Wednesday or Thursday gives you a more relaxed experience and the same food. The space is casual and welcoming: this is a neighborhood joint that happens to do everything right, not a destination restaurant that asks you to dress for the occasion.

The restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday. If you are planning around a specific day, Wednesday through Sunday only.

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Beyond J. Selby's: Vegan-Friendly Options Near Cathedral Hill

Cathedral Hill is a residential neighborhood, not a restaurant row. J. Selby's is the reason to make a specific trip here. But the surrounding area — especially Grand Avenue five minutes to the east — adds more options for a longer St. Paul outing.

Cafe Latte — 850 Grand Ave, Summit Hill. Six blocks east of J. Selby's and you are on Grand Avenue. Cafe Latte is a St. Paul institution: a cafeteria-style cafe with an extensive menu of soups, salads, sandwiches, and pastries that has been running since 1984. Many items are vegetarian or easily made vegan. The tomato basil soup has a local following. Worth adding as a coffee or dessert stop on a Cathedral Hill visit.

Everest on Grand — 1278 Grand Ave, Summit Hill. Himalayan cuisine with a strong vegetarian tradition built into the cooking by default. Multiple tofu and vegetable dishes arrive vegan without modification. Further east on Grand Avenue but a natural addition to a St. Paul plant-based food crawl.

Grand Avenue itself is the natural extension of any Cathedral Hill dining plan. See our Grand Avenue Vegan Guide for the full rundown — the two neighborhoods connect and an evening that starts at J. Selby's and continues east on Grand gives you a complete St. Paul vegan experience.

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Getting to Cathedral Hill

By car: From I-94, take the Lexington Parkway/Hamline Avenue exit and head south to Selby Avenue, then east on Selby to Victoria Street. Street parking is available along Victoria and the surrounding residential blocks. Weekend evenings near J. Selby's can be competitive for parking — give yourself an extra few minutes. The surrounding neighborhood streets are generally findable within a short walk.

By bus: Metro Transit Route 21 (Selby Avenue) runs through Cathedral Hill and connects to downtown St. Paul to the east. Route 84 runs along Grand Avenue to the south and connects to the Grand Avenue corridor. Neither route makes Cathedral Hill as convenient as driving, but a no-car visit from downtown St. Paul is viable.

Combine with Summit Avenue: After dinner at J. Selby's, walk north one block to Summit Avenue and head east. Summit Avenue is one of the great residential streets in the Midwest — Victorian mansions, stone churches, F. Scott Fitzgerald's childhood home — and the walk to the Cathedral of Saint Paul is about a mile of architectural spectacle. It is a genuinely good use of an hour after a meal.

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For more St. Paul vegan dining, see our Grand Avenue Vegan Guide and the full Vegan Restaurants in St. Paul overview. For the Twin Cities-wide picture, the Best Vegan Restaurants Minneapolis 2026 guide covers both cities.