Vegan in Paris

French food is generally famous for being stinky, fatty, meaty, cheesy and glorious, but it doesn’t really come to mind when thinking of vegan options.

So, what can a vegan, who speaks no French* and can’t afford the restaurants, eat in Paris?

Baguette!
Baguette is probably the best bread in the world. It is nothing like the nasty, dry, “french” stick bread you get at home. Instead it is soft, chewy, flavoursome and fantastic-smelling, and the perfect base for a yummy vegan sanger on the go. We had ours with some vegan cheese, salad, and either tofu, Tartex or vegan sliced “meat”, and sometimes snacked on baguette with jam or peanut butter. I was basically in bread heaven the entire time we were there, and at 90 cents for a loaf nearly as long as my arm, they make for a perfect staple for gluten-tolerant vegans.

Baguette at the Louvre

Little travel tip: we have carried one plastic container with us throughout the whole trip, and use it to store pre-chopped sandwich fillings, such as tomato and vegan cheese, and tofu, ready to pile onto whatever vegan sandwich base we find. It makes things much simpler, and saves us buying loads of single serve things and expensive, crappy lunch options. Its also useful for carrying of storing leftovers in hostels and bnbs, and carrying sugar so it doesn’t get all through your stuff when you switch locations

Crepes!
Okay, so clearly you can’t just tip your vegan hat at any old crepe, eggy things that they are, but there are some crepes that fit the bill – made of buckwheat and water only, and available in most supermarkets and mini markets, and, I’m told, some stalls.

Crepe filling

 

Crepe and Le Torre Eiffel

We had ours with chocolate sauce and fruit, but you could also eat them with a cheese sauce, veg or vegan mince, which brings me to what you can find to eat in a supermarket in Paris…

Shopping for Vegans in Paris

There are two places we did most of our shopping in Paris, disregarding the fruit shops and boulangeries (bakeries)- ordinary supermarkets, and Namo Bio. In ordinary supermarkets we found a number of vegan staples, including vegan margarine, (BioSoft I think?), peanut butter, mixed nuts (although nuts are very expensive if you haven’t brought your nut cracker with you),  several brands of soy milk, wheetabix, raw sugar, Alpro soy desserts, and the like, but no tofu, and be warned, the tinned beans and lentils generally have chicken fat, lard, bacon or other pork products in them.

Namo Bio hoard - vegan deli slices, bread, champagne and truffle flavour Tartetx (I know, right?), choc-hazelnut spread, fairtrade tea, and Cheezly

We were very lucky to also be situated close enough to a vegan-friendly grocery store, Namo Bio, which served us well with lots of tofu, vegan burgers, vegan choc-hazelnut spread, organic fruit and veg, vegan cooking cream, even more Tartex, soy yoghurt, and the very best vegan cheese I have ever tasted. It was called Cheezly, but didn’t bear the Redwood logo, so I don’t know what’s going on there. It was a hard cheese, and tasted completely divine, creamy and full and perfect with no weird soy after taste. When I get home I intend to do a “best vegan products in the world” post, and this stuff will definitely be on it.

Namo Bio looks like this

With our stash of vegan stuff we had some good lunches and dinners, including some of my favourite soup, Creme Du Barry, and a decadent lunch of fruit, bread, cheeze, “meats” and chocolate, yum.

 

Decadent lunch part 1 - fried bread, Tartex, tomatoes, vegan deli slices and Cheezly

Decadent Lunch part 2 - apple and choc-hazelnut spread

Maoz again, with not so great results

Maoz on the river Siene

Hmmm...

Paris boasts another of the Maoz vegetarian felafel chain, which we liked so much in the US. Unfortunately I can report that the one in Paris kinda sucks. The felafel were edible enough, but the salad options were mainly just the creepy kind of pickled, overcooked carrot, watery olives and sad lettuce – none of the roasted cauliflower and broccoli or chickpea salad we found in New York. That was disappointing enough, but when we were left with upset tummies (which we suspect is a result of Maoz, but there’s no telling when you’re travelling) the thumbs down was solidified. Very unfun, and annoying because there are so few vegan options, I hate to have to diss one.

For those who visit Paris soon, Mr says it was good last time he was there, so it might still be wrth a look, despite my crappy experience.

Out for lunch at Saveurs Veget’ Halles
Website: http://saveursvegethalles.fr/

The one proper meal we had out (like, at a table and stuff), was at Saveurs Veget’halles, near Notre Dame. We ordered two set lunches, one with a starter and one with a dessert, for the best of both worlds, cheapo style.

We got an asparagus salad, which turned out to be a few pieces of asparagus with a little bit of salad. It looked bright but a little forlorn, but the asparagus was well cooked and lovely and the salad came with ingenious spray bottles of oil and vinegar, and of course, yummy French bread, so we weren’t complying.

Asparagus Salad

For mains we had the mushroom something with blackberry and ginger sauce, and a plate of what turned out to be seemed veg with a creamy chive sauce. (I read chive sauce and pointed, not stopping to think what “vapor” meant).

Mushroom loaf thing

Steamed veg with great chive sauce

Both meals came out with a scoop of perfect mashed potato and a scoop of quinoa. The mushroom and blackberry-ginger sauce was the definite favourite. It was sort of a loaf, which tasted great on its own, but even better with the sauce, a flavour combination I’m looking forward to trying at home. The steamed veg were, unsurprisingly, a little bland for a main meal, but tasty enough with the sauce.

For dessert I tried to order a chocolate cake, but ended up being served a carrot cake muffin. I didn’t say anything about it, because there is no knowing whether I ordered the wrong thing, or they sent out the wrong thing. It tasted pretty good, was nice and warm, and came with vegan cream on the side, but Mr thought it wasn’t sweet enough, so I got the whole thing to myself. (No complaints there).

All in all it was a really nice meal, and if I had the chance to go again I would, but I’d probably order something a little more decadent.

Link love

This post was really helpful – http://www.hungryhungryhippie.com/vegan-in-paris/

Also, this one (and the whole blog) – http://veganparis.com/2009/01/13/vegan-paris-on-a-budget/

As per usual, I suggest vegans avoid all the posts floating around about being a vegetarian in Paris, cos they seem to be mostly about how great cheese is and the few vegan options they noticed.

*This is where I learned all the French I know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuXdhow3uqQ. Well, this, Eurovision, and two years of chef training (no, I am not a chef, it was a high school thing, and I never really got past how to make a proper club sandwich, a clear soup, clarified butter, pastry and pesto). So I can read a menu, an point out the shape of the chopped veggies, and then award points (as long as it is 8, 10 or 12) but not much else.

 

Denmark!

I am sad to report that finding vegan food in Denmark is only a little easier than affording vegan food in Denmark.

To give you an idea of prices, an ordinary coffee costs about $7.

We found a specialty health food store who were the only stockists of tofu that we came across, City Helse, and found soy milk at one or two grocery stores. As for vegetables, Denmark has to import them all due to a harsh climate, so they are not as varied, available or cheap as I’m used to.  As with Scotland, it was a case of eating a lot of cabbage, potato and onion, and avoiding the horrible tomatoes.

Its possible to be vegan in Denmark, of course, but its not easy. There are not many veg places to eat, and of those most do not have reliable vegan options. Most of time, dues to language and price issues, we ate at home, as its much easier to take your time and read labels (in Danish) than try to explain veganism to a stressed out waiter.

 

Christiania
40 years ago a group Danes broke down the fence of an abandoned military site to create a park for their kids. Soon after the area was squatted and declared a free town – separate from the surrounding sea of Christianshavn. You can read all about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania.

What does it matter? Well, Christiana is now home to a vegetarian cafe, which aren’t exactly common here, with vegan options, which is even less common. We stopped in for a bite to eat after we stumbled across it during our sight-seeing.

The atmosphere was great in this little, warm cafe. We shared a table with a group of people in their 50′s and 60′s who seemed to be having a meeting of some sort, and it was all smiles, even if there was a big language barrier.

We got the soup of the day, a lentil soup that tasted a little like lime pickle, but in a good way, and a chickpea salad with hommus and bread. I thought the food was good, but it really made an impression on Mr – he’s still talking about that hommus!

I don’t have any photos of the food here, as it against Christiana law to take photos in some areas, and I wasn’t sure if it would be a problem here, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that the food was good.

The best of the rest: Canada

Yup, too much travel and not enough blogging!

We left Canada, and the whole North American continent a little while ago now, but its never too late to post reviews and pictures of vegan food from far away, so on we go!

As well as trying enough butter tarts to make me a little sick, I also sampled two other Canadian favourites- Poutine and Nanaimo Bars.

Poutine

Poutine is a Quebec dish of hot chips (or french fries) smothered in gravy and cheese curds. If you can get past the question of what, exactly, a cheese curd is (I can almost hear you thinking, Katie), it sounds pretty good, right? Let’s face it, anything that is deep fried then covered in gravy and has the prospect of cheese is probably going to be good.

But where to find a vegan version? I was told it would be difficult, as most places don’t even have vego gravy, but it turned out to be as simple as a google search.

We headed to Poutini’s House of Poutineon West Queen Street in Torono in serach of the goods, and we were not disappointed. Poutini’s has many types of poutine available, including some with bacon and maple syrup, but only one vegan version (still, I’m not complaining).

Poutine on the street

We got ours to have in, as it was very cold (okay, maybe 15 degrees) given we’d been living in an eternal summer for the previous 9 months. The poutine was warm and mushy in a good way. The gravy was pretty tasty, though it still has nothing on that dastardly chicken-gravy I remember from post-night-out-munchings in Canberra, I’m sad to say. Poutini’s substitutes Daiya Cheese for the traditional curds.

Poutine is ready for its close up

My first Canadian poutine was tasty, warm and filling, and I can understand how it became the number 1 late-night/cold-night snack food. It will probably be my only poutine, however, as it just wasn’t enough to knock plain old chips with vinegar off my personal hot-chip podium.

Nanaimo Bars

I tasted the other of Canada’s favourite sweets courtesy of very fancy bakery, LPK’s Culinary Groove.

Nanaimo Bars are a slice with a graham cracker crust, a chocolate top and a filling made of frosting. I tried both the plain vanilla and the peanut butter version, and they were both really good. The filling was very fluffy, but so sweet that I couldn’t finish one in one go. Luckily refrigeration is a thing, so I got to eat a little bit of the bars every day we were in Toronto!

As with the poutine these were great, but a little too sweet to become an ongoing part of my at-home baking schedule.

(the photos for the bars appear to be lost, but I’ll add them when I find them).