Sunflower Thai Vegan Restaurant cooks plant-based Thai food at 6/50 High Street in Auckland's CBD, with its Facebook page as the main online point of contact. Thai cuisine takes to vegan cooking unusually well: coconut milk, rice noodles, lemongrass, galangal and fresh chilli carry plenty of flavour on their own, so a good vegan curry should taste complete rather than like a compromise. The real test of a vegan Thai kitchen is how it replaces fish sauce and shrimp paste, which slip quietly into traditional curries, stir-fries and noodle dishes — the better ones rebuild that savoury depth with mushrooms, soy and fermented bean paste. It also pays to ask about egg in pad thai and fried rice, and to check whether a menu leans vegetable-forward or towards soy-protein "mock meats", since good places sit at every point along that range. Sunflower brings that fully plant-based approach to Thai classics on High Street, right in the middle of Auckland's CBD.