Vegan on Tour: Stockholm, Sweden

Finally sharing the last instalment of my Scandinavia trip recap- “Vegan on Tour: Stockholm”! You can find parts 1 and 2 here if you missed them!

*Warning* This is a LONG post! I’ve deliberately not shared many pictures of the city itself and limited myself to mostly recapping our food adventures as it would have been even longer had I done so. You’ll just have to go to Stockholm yourselves to see it!

Right, let’s go!

We arrived in Stockholm pretty late after a long train ride from Oslo (I think I slept most of the way! There was no air con and the heat put me to sleep) and quickly checked out our little apartment (which we found through airbnb again) before heading out for some dinner. We’d looked online to find somewhere open late, veg-friendly and near where we were staying and discovered Beijing 8, an Asian dumpling restaurant which looked promising.

We got a selection of little dishes to share, all of which were tasty: Steamed veggie dumplings with plum & ginger sauce, chili marinated tofu, steamed broccoli with garlic and steamed & salted edamame. Just enough to tide us over until breakfast.

Chia Pudding with Raspberry Compote (and a banana on the side) from a lovely health food store, 8t8. We loved this place and went regularly, mainly to chat with one of the girls working there, Hannah, who was a lot of fun and always happy to talk. The shop has a really good selection of products and normally (outside of the summer months), there’s a noodle bar in the other half of the place which looks to be worth checking out if you’re visiting.

Green juice from JuiceVerket.

Always more smoothies! Orange, goji berries, almond milk, turmeric and ginger. Yum.

This came from Urban Deli, a cool food market and popular hipster hangout. It was kind of like a mini Whole Foods- definitely not all veggie but they had some good vegan takeaway options, including this noodle salad, enjoyed in the nearby park.

No it’s not meat on there! But something called “Tzay”.  It’s a soy product and probably pretty processed so not one for every day but it was really really good. Something to try at least once.

Just down the road was an all veggie health food store, “good store”. They had a good range of ingredients for home cooking, fridge and freezer items, organic fruit and veg and vegan snacks.

Blueberry Lifestyle was one of our favourite breakfast spots. Look at all the vegan snack bars! Raw-bite and GetRaw bars were sold all over Scandinavia and I tried quite a few. Better than your average snack bar.

I noticed they also stocked the Epic Protein powders by Sprout Living which are supposed to be really good but which we unfortunately can’t get in the UK.

They did amazing smoothies, and proper meal-size ones too! This was the “Goji Delicious” : Goji berries, almonds, rosehip, strawberries, banana and oat milk.

Looks the same but this one was the “Health Nut”: Strawberries, banana, toasted coconut, peanut butter and oat milk.

They only had one veggie lunch option but luckily it was good! Beetroot patties, lentils, fennel/cabbage slaw and two sauces- red pepper and cashew-dill. It even came with rye bread.

Another day, another salad!  Most of the time it made sense to be prepared and buy food when we found it, since vegan options, although more and more plentiful, can’t exactly be found on every corner.

This raw salad from Doctor Salad had marinated red cabbage, sweet peas, mixed salad, zucchini, sprouts, pomegranate seeds, green onions, almonds, cashew cream, avocado and pumpkin seeds.

After all that salad I think I needed something a little less healthy! Cinnamon buns are a classic Swedish treat, normally eaten for “fika” which is the Swedish equivalent of our English “afternoon tea”. I was really hoping to find a vegan version on the trip, and I did! I had mine for breakfast!

The organic bakery, Naturbageriet, was almost all vegan and had all the pastries you could ever want, as well as some savoury pies and tarts. I was expecting more of a bun than a pastry but whatever I got it was delicious! Naturbageriet have a couple of locations in the city and I think in Copenhagen too so make sure you get there!

A lot of the exclusively vegetarian restaurants weren’t open in the evening or closed early but we found a great Mexican (non-veggie) restaurant in our neck of the woods called Calexico’s and loved it so much we had to go back for a second meal there.

I don’t eat out at Mexican places very frequently at home, but think I should change that. This burrito was stuffed full of spicy black beans, grilled vegetables, rice, guacamole, plantains (the best part!) and salsa verde.

The next time I had soft tacos with sweet potato, black beans and roasted pineapple salsa. We got a side of guac and grilled corn too.

Back to raw food, sort of anyway. We found a nice all raw place, Matapoteket, but it was only open during the day and by the time we got there, hoping to pick up some takeaway dinner, they’d run out of most of their food.

We got some of their raw caesar salad and raw bolognese stuffed tomatoes but they were out of pesto for their courgette noodles. We happened to have half a jar of olive tapenade, an avocado and can of chickpeas back at the apartment so we threw it all together and made a tasty and satisfying meal!

Another day we were a bit more organized and got there when they still had food! Terrible picture of the brazil nut pie, with sauerkraut, curried salad, crudités and miso dip. We had raw strawberry cheesecake that evening too but the picture has gone astray.

We’re nearly there, hope some of you are still with me!

Final salad of many! I was a little gutted we didn’t discover the Renée Voltaire café until the end of our stay as it looked fantastic and had a million and one different vegan salads, hot dishes and desserts. This was a mish-mash of a few of the different salads available- Kamut berry, bean & raw golden and candy cane beetroot, buckwheat salad, beetroot hummus, leafy greens and rye bread and extra hummus on the side.

On my final breakfast I had a blueberry muffin which came from Blueberry Lifestyle. I’d seen them earlier in the week, along with vegan carrot cake and chocolate cake but had been too excited about the smoothies to try one. It was decent but doesn’t beat my favourite Le Pain blueberry muffin.

 

We did do things other than eat, just in case you were wondering! Here are a few highlights:

- Old town (Gamla Stan). Really pretty and quite special (Royal Palace & Cathedral are in the same area).

- Shop/café browsing in “SoFo”. This is an area on the central island of Sodermalm and a cool place to explore. Good shopping if your wallet can handle the prices!

- Tour of the Swedish Parliament (The Reksdig)- Free, only 1hr long and a good insight into the running of a country that’s deemed to be one of the most democratic.

- Vasa Museum. Impressive museum all about the sinking of the Vasa ship. I wouldn’t say I was into ships but I found it fascinating.

-Rosendals Tradgard (public garden, farm shop, organic café) on the far side of Djurgarden. Nice for a sunny day.

 

I hope this is helpful for anyone planning a trip to Stockholm, or even if you’re not, that you’ve enjoyed a little peek into what a “vegan on tour” gets up to!

 

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