I call Mildreds the little black dress of restaurants - it suits every occasion. You can have lunch with your mates, a business meeting in the afternoon or hang out in the evening. It always has a really relaxed friendly atmosphere. Because you're cheek by jowl with everybody it's very sociable, so you end up just chatting with people. Well I do anyway. You can't reserve a table so it's very democratic, you just rock up and see if you can get in. Even though it's right in the middle of Soho, it's kind of tucked away so you have to know where it is.

This is absolutely my favourite vegetarian restaurant - I've never had anything bad here. There is something incredibly exciting about opening up a menu and thinking 'great I can have anything on here' which is weird when you've grown up never having that.

I became a veggie when I was four. Apparently the story goes I was eating a lamb chop and said, 'Did this used to be alive?' and my mum said, 'Yes' and after that I wouldn't eat meat any more. Now I'm as likely to want to eat meat as I am to start eating plastic. It's been so long it's like a non-food to me.

I couldn't have an animal die just so I could eat it. The way I think about it is if I was to be killed I would rather be worn than eaten. I think eating something is such an impermanent way to express a life. To be minced up and put in a burger is a bit of an inglorious ending, but to wind up as a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes, well, then your death has meant something. That's how I see it.

I wasn't hugely bothered about food as a teenager. Food was at the bottom of the list after shoes, clothes, records, make-up - food was only just above rent. When I was in the band [Laverne was lead singer and guitarist in Kenickie through the Nineties] I existed on a diet of Dairylea Dunkers and cheap booze. It's not a healthy lifestyle being on the road. The forecourt of an Esso station is not the best place to develop your palate, it must be said. If I never see another can of Nurishment in my life it will be too soon.

Some restaurants definitely act like they morally disapprove of vegetarianism. I remember having an argument with a maître d' who kept insisting 'eat some fish - it's good for your brains!' and wouldn't let it go. At J Sheekey the waiters always give me a cheekily disapproving tut, but having said that they always put on a good alternative - their food is utterly delectable.

My husband Graeme is in charge of food in our house, he loves cooking. We decided our one-year-old son Fergus should have meat until he's old enough to make up his own mind, but it's weird how wrong I feel feeding it to him. So we eat healthily - everything's organic - but as well as being a mother, I'm also Northern, so I think food should be a pleasure. I'm not opposed to him having a bit of jam on toast or whatever. I think kids get food issues when you try to force things, so I try to be relaxed about it.

Though I do a mean Yorkshire pudding, I'm a terrible cook, which is awful considering how much I love to eat. I've had several disasters, the worst of which was when Graeme had left me a pizza to heat up and left the instructions in the oven folded up. I think you can see where this is going.

• Lauren Laverne is a judge on Orange Unsigned Act with Sony Ericsson, Sundays on T4, 12.40pm. The Culture Show returns on 18 November, on BBC2.

Mildreds, 45 Lexington Street, London W1 020 7494 1634

History

Opened in 1988 by Jane Muir and Diane Thomas, the ethos of the restaurant is the same now as it was then - 'to serve imaginative, international vegetarian cuisine made freshly on the premises of the highest standard for the lowest price'.

Most popular dishes

Ale and wild-mushroom pie with mushy peas and chips, £8.75

Burger of the day with all the trimmings, £7.40

Panfried cherry tomato, halloumi and wilted spinach with balsamic glaze, £5.25

Who eats there

Leona Lewis, Russell Brand, David Walliams, Judi Dench and Peter O'Toole

Opening times

Mon - Sat 12noon- 11pm

· This article was amended on Monday November 17 2008. The photograph of Lauren Laverne included on this article was taken by Linda Brownlee, not Phil Fisk as we said. This has been corrected.