Vegan eats in Gdansk

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I really loved Gdansk, and something that certainly played a part in that was the food. One of the more difficult aspects of going vegan has been travelling; finding suitable places to satiate my everlasting hunger and stop the inevitable moodiness that results from having to eat something you don’t really enjoy that much (please say there are other people who are like this too) when you’re in a foreign country and don’t speak the local language can be tricky at times. Gdansk, however, was a properly good city for dietary requirements.

I don’t know why I expected otherwise, really, but I did, so it was quite the treat to discover so many delicious things I could eat there. We did our research where to eat vegan in Gdansk primarily through TripAdvisor’s questionable ‘Vegan Options’ filter and the Happy Cow website, and although we did also read a couple of blog posts on the subject (it is rather niche, I suppose), there weren’t too many of them, so I thought I’d put my own together. This post will list the eateries we went to where I was pleased with the vegan offering either because of the standard of food, the variety and choice, or both. The good news is, I would recommend them all, although they are very different in their own ways and hopefully you’ll get a gist of what each place is about.

I’ll make my apologies now for the photography; I’m not particularly adept at using the Canon in anything other than perfect daylight conditions and am spectacularly bad at photographing food at the best of times. Something to work on this year!

Pierogarnia Mandu

Last time I went to Poland, I managed to end up leaving without having a single Pierogi. This was officially Not Okay, so I wasn’t going to be leaving the country again without sampling their dumplings, and we chose Pierogarnia Mandu to do so. The likeihood is that vegan or not, this place will be suggested to you as a place to eat – I had a few Instagram messages recommending it (thanks to anyone who sent recs!) and it’s currently number 6 on Tripadvisor.

There were three vegan options when we were there in December, although there seem to be four now; a sweet option, two savoury options and an I’m-not-sure-what-to-categorise-this-in carrot and peanut butter option. I’d have been really interested to try that, but when you order you get around 10-12 of the things and that would have been some severe food regret if it had been weird. I went for the fried tofu and paprika ones in the end and they were in-fricking-credible to say the least. I could have eaten about three more portions (not that they were small portions, I’m just greedy) and we were pretty sad when we ran out of time to pay it a second visit .

Vegan Port Pizza Restaurant

On our second evening in the city we headed from the centre to trendy Wrzeszcz, an area far more urban feeling than the part we were staying in which was packed with cool restaurants and eateries. One of these was Vegan Port, which offers a choice of 12 vegan pizzas as well as lasagne, curry, and loads more. They don’t have an English menu so the poor girl in there at the time translated every single item on the menu for us. Such an angel and we ended up having a nice chat and a bit of a giggle about it.

We drank their homemade still lemonade with mint – v.good – and pizzas. My selection involved vegan salami, peppers, mushrooms and spinach and oh boy was it delicious. Would definitely recommend; service is great and super friendly, the food is fab and it’s just a cool place.

Avocado Vegan Bistro & Café

Don’t roll your eyes at me, I’ll go to somewhere with avocado in the name if I please and it bears no relation to my reasons for not being to afford a house. Feeling that since we were already in Wrzeszcz we may as well sample another of it’s eateries, we went straight from pizza to cake and popped into this little café for something sweet. There’s a great selection of vegan cakes here and I believe they do savoury snacks/lunches in the daytime too.

I had a peanut butter pie and it was as good as it sounds – as good as it sounds if you like peanut butter anyway, which you would probably have to to enjoy this particular pie. There were also a lot of teas and coffees to choose from (as I said in this post, there was just an abundance of glorious hot drinks to be had in Gdansk). Oh, and it’s also pretty instagram friendly in terms of lighting and décor if that’s your bag…

Anima Café

We’d made no particular plans to go here, but after a morning of street art hunting in Zaspa on our last day we thought we’d get brunch when we got back to old town, and lo and behold Anima Café had a cheery little ‘We serve vegan food!’ chalkboard sign perched outside. It’s not vegan only, and serves meat too, so great if you are going with a mixed group in terms of dietary needs. There’s a really good choice of meat and dairy free options and these are very clearly marked so there’s no confusion (always a plus) – as were gluten free dishes.

I had some of the best scrambled tofu and vegan mayo I’ve ever had here, a particularly extravagant coffee (again, there’s a large selection of teas and coffees) and took away a vegan truffle too. Service was beautifully friendly and helpful and it’s a really lovely place to sit and relax while thinking about your next exploring move.

Retro

Retro was our choice for breakfast for our first morning in Gdansk. They serve primarily oatmeal bowls and open tartine sandwiches and there are vegan options for both; just one of the tartines, but all the oatmeals can be made with almond milk (and/or GF oats if you’re gluten free). There are loads of toppings on the oatmeals to choose from, but in the end I went with banana, walnut, cinnamon and peanut butter.

I was slightly hungover, so I don’t think I perhaps appreciated this as much as I should have, since I’d usually I’d prefer to eat bread and fake meat sausages after a night of a few too many, but it was some damn good oatmeal. What I did appreciate was the hangover-friendly (or just cool) décor; not too bright, lots of dark wood and chintzy touches, and lamps on each table. And yep, you guessed it, there’s a huge range of drinks that can be made with dairy free milk plus an amazing tea selection. The ‘Good morning’ tea with elderflower, citrus, apple and goji berries was an absolute winner and I’d have one right now if I could.

Bioway

This was the first place we ate in Gdansk and chose it merely by virtue of it being between the train station and our AirBnb, since we had arrived feeling quite ravenous (I had, anyway, but then I’m always hungry). It’s canteen-esque in style, in that you get a tray and slide it along picking up any bits and pieces that you want before getting to the main serving station where you choose a meal. All of the food is vegetarian and lots is vegan too – the ones that are are clearly marked and there is a lot of variety.

Each main meal comes with a tomato sauce and three different salads. I chose a burrito, which turned out to have what I think was some kind of soy meat substitute in it; doesn’t sound particularly appetising, but it was great and the portion was enormous. A perfect quick lunch stop, especially if you’re looking for something involving a lot of veggies.

So, see – told you it was a great city for vegan eats. There were so many other places on our list as possibilities to try too, so – oh no – maybe I’ll have to go back.

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