London vegan news, reviews & events
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When we first moved here last spring, the north-west part of the city was curiously lacking in vegan places, compared to the rest of Berlin.
While it is still a noticeably empty zone on the Happy Cow map, the situation has improved due to the opening of two all-vegan cafés, Geh Veg and Valladares. They’re both very nice places too.
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This weekend was the Berlin Vegan Summer Festival, and it would have been remiss of me to not visit and take photos of food for this blog. So I did my duty and headed down to Alexanderplatz.
On Friday we had a spicy hot dog with sauerkraut from popular vegan company Wheaty…
…and also a not-egg-mayonnaise bagel, from die Leckereienfabrik (roughly translates as the ‘delicious things factory’, a café in Berlin we haven’t got around to visiting yet!).
On Sunday we had a wonderful burger and sweet potato fries from the Vincent Vegan food truck. The photo doesn’t do the burger justice, it was full of crispy fresh veg, and guacamole.
We also shared this big choco-waffle with squirty cream, which was nice but not amazing.
To finish off, here’s something we didn’t eat but will do soon: two doughnuts from Brammibals. The doughnuts are sat in the fridge right now, calling out to me.
There’s one coconut and one toffee. (I think that calling just got louder!) And in case you’re worrying, those aren’t plastic containers, but some sort of biodegradeable material. Which is nice.
That’s only a small selection of everything available at the fest. There’s only so much I can eat!
In addition to all the food, the serious side was also covered, there were lots of animal protection causes, people working against factory farming, good people spreading the word about veganism. There were talks and discussions in the congress tent, and also music entertainment on the main stage.
A very full three-day event, and I doff my cap to the organisers!
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My favourite vegan places in Berlin.
This is a difficult post to write, as there are so many great places to choose from in Berlin – and new places keep opening! So I should say now that you’ll almost certainly disagree with me, and this is my personal list of the locations I enjoy visiting the most right now. These three eateries are 100% vegan. They’re not in any particular order, as I can’t really choose between them! But they’re definitely my top three, and I think that they’re almost perfect.
Post by:I’ve not written a Berlin blog post for a couple of weeks, and I’m not going to write one this week either because I’ve been in Copenhagen, so I’ll write about that instead!
First of all, I was surprised at the scarcity of vegan places in Copenhagen. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by Berlin’s seemingly endless array of vegan food, but compared to other European capitals of a similar size, Copenhagen felt lacking.
My favourite place of the trip was the Astrid och Aporna Spiseri which translates roughly to “Astrid and the Monkeys’ eatery”. It’s an all-vegan burger-and-hot-dog place, and very nice it was too. Unfortunately the chip fryer was out of order when we were there, but the burger was large and tasty.
Astrid och Aporna also have a vegan grocery store/cafe in Copenhagen, which is really clean and bright with a wide range of vegan groceries, toiletries, etc. (We were particularly excited to find Fentimans fizzy drinks as they were a favourite treat of ours in the UK!). They sell a lot of VBites products which have been rebranded by Astrid och Aporna with wonderful cartoons on the labels. I really like the designs, very fresh and happy.
Also well worth visiting is a brand-new vegan ice-cream shop called NiceCream. They sell ice-cream as a lolly on a stick, no scoops here. There are many flavours, we shared one peanut butter and chocolate, and one toffee strawberry. They were really tasty! Highly recommended.
Copenhagen has four raw vegan places and we visited one café called Raw 42. I’m not a fan of raw food as a concept as it feels to me like a fad diet tacked on to veganism’s moral and ethical standpoint, but the sandwich I had was very tasty with lots of avocado, which is always a winner. We also had a tasty tomato stroganoff (which was hot, so perhaps this raw thing isn’t what I thought it was anyway?).
The one non-vegan place we bought food from was right near our apartment, a pizza take-away called Express Pizza. They had a separate vegan menu with a range of vegan pizzas, plus a wrap and a sandwich. It was a good pizza although nothing to get too excited about, unless you’re a hungry vegan in Copenhagen.
There are more vegan-friendly places in Copenhagen which we didn’t have time to visit, including a café in Christiania which a few people have mentioned to us and is apparently almost fully vegan, so if you have any recommendations let us know in the comments.
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I’m going to take a brief break from Berlin this week, and tell you about a unique vegan restaurant called Gare du Nord. Despite the name, it’s not in Paris but actually in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and we visited in November last year.
Well, the restaurant does have a strange link to Berlin actually. One of my specialist subjects is the former East Germany. For anyone interested in recent history, what happened in this part of the world during the 45 years after the war is fascinating.
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You know, Berlin really is the city that keeps on giving, if you’re vegan. Hardly a week goes by without some new addition to the city’s vegan menu.
But one thing that Berlin has lacked is an equivalent to the London Vegan Drinks event… until now! (Well, until Friday 17th of July, anyway.)
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This weekend found myself and my little vegan gang at a little festival called the Green Market, a small festival which happens three times a year.
The ‘summer edition’ took place next to the river Spree (in part of the former Berlin border strip, for any other history geeks out there!).
And though it may be small (about 30 stands?) the market has quality over quantity, as in addition to vegan clothing, shoes and accessories, there were tons of delicious things to eat.
Plenty of burger and wrap trucks, an ice-cream stand by Kontor (reviewed previously), and – behind a crowd of excited vegans – a new doughnut company called Brammibals, who are currently seeking crowdfunding for a new shop.
So without further ado, check out the following food photos:
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One of the great things about Berlin is that there seems to be so many new vegan places to visit, it’s difficult to keep up!
A visit by my sister last weekend was the perfect opportunity to try somewhere we hadn’t been before, so we took a break from sightseeing and let the U-Bahn take us away from the tourist hordes, down to Neukölln, where there’s a new vegan tapas bar called Alaska. (I neglected to ask about the bizarre name, perhaps that particular US state is noted for its Spanish cuisine?)
It’s a really lovely place, a real oasis on a rather run-down street. Nicely decorated and comfortable, with a pleasant atmosphere, prompt service and very friendly multilingual staff.
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One of the great things about living in Berlin is that there’s a Veganz vegan supermarket a 10 minute walk away, or even less on the bike. Veganz is really more of a mini-supermarket, though they do have a huge range of products available.
But like all supermarkets, Veganz often has special offers or last- minute reductions on items nearing the end of their shelf-life. This is great for a cheapskate like me. My eyes can sense those bright orange price stickers before I’ve even set off. As a result, we end up trying exotic foodstuffs that are normally out of our price range. (Our freezer is full of bags of grated Daiya cheese that were a bargain at €0.99 each!)
