Sunday, 20 October 2024
Given how easy it was to find organic pizza in Milan it required noteworthy effort to find an ice-cream parlour using organic ingredients. But although the
Gelateria km zero isn't necessarily located along usual tourist tracks, I full-heartedly recommend to take the detour to have an ice-cream there, especially if you are near the Darsena.
When I was there the weather wasn't nice, and the place empty, but the gorgeous ice-cream made up for the rain and the cold. In addition to the ice-cream you can also buy ice-cream cakes and lollies, but also artisanal chocolates, cookies, cheese cake and pralines. If you feel extravagant have a brioche or a Belgian-style waffle filled with ice-cream.
Most ingredients are organic, and as the name "kilometer 0" suggests, there's a focus on Italian, if possible local produce.
Needless to say that vegan flavours are available.
The globally operating French ice-cream franchise
Amorino has four shops in Milan by now, usually offering one or two organic flavours nicely shaped in the form of a rose. Here I only list the branch I came across in person, in the entrance area of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle Secondo at the Duomo.
More to try
During my stay I learned about the following fully vegan artisanal ice-cream parlour likely to use organic ingredients near the Cadorna train station) but unfortunately I did not have time to visit. I'd appreciate to hear about your experience if you get there.
Closed
2024-10-20 14:30:01
[Milan, Milano, Mailand, biologico, organic, vegan, ice-cream, gelato]
[direct link · table of contents]
Saturday, 19 October 2024
Milan isn't the birth place of Italian pizza, but an easy place to find the world's arguably most sought-after fast food the way it should be: with long leavening of the dough, made with organic ingredients. Pizza is not only served by dedicated no-frills pizza restaurants – it is also an ubiquitous item on the menu of organic restaurants serving the classical sequence of Italian food, with starters, first and second courses.
At all places reviewed here the service staff is approaching international guests in English, and the younger the waiters the less patient they seem when approached in broken Italian.
The best food we had in Milano was served at Bioesseri restaurant in Brera which seems to get most of its ingredients and wines from Sicily. Not only the food was delicious, also the casual ambiente – the restaurant is more or less a wide slope from one side of the building to the other, with serveral zones, all decorated differently but consistent as a whole. This place was also the only one with trained, professional service, but there's of course a price tag to it. As in any better restaurant, the menu is restricted to four/five items per course, both vegetarian, fish and meat. In addition there's a slightly longer pizza menu. The pizza oven is visible from the guest room in the back, the pizza itself was of the softer, less crisp type, with carefully selected toppings making it to more than just a filling meal. If you want to try the Milan signature dish, risotto Milanese with Ossobucco, I'd fullheartedly recommend this place. The pasta we had was nicely amalgamated, and the antipasti of very different styles, but all nicely done. Starters and first course were sufficiently filling, so we left out the second course and enjoyed all desserts – sufficiently refined for a casual restaurant, except for the (very palatable) tiramisu all came with a little surprising note on top.
This place is also a nice option for an aperitivo, cocktail in the evening or simply a very good wine, with more quiet outdoor tables at the Via Fiori Oscusi. There's a second restaurant in Palermo.
Bioesseri isn't the only fully organic restaurant in town: At the hotel restaurant Bio Riso in Affori you have another chance to try risotto milanese – even without meat. The place in the basement of Eco Hotel Milano is located a short walk from the M3 metro station Affori Centro, but that's off any of the usual tourist tracks. So better call to book a table in advance. The place also offers gluten-free dinner, as the name suggests they consider rice a key ingredient.
If you are more into beer, and less into food, Organic may be a place of your fancy.
This is a stylish pub without trained staff, all the food – pizza, fries (with different cores, not only potatoes), pasta, avocado toast and bowls – goes perfectly with beer. The kitchen uses a selection of organic ingredients but is careless towards the taste. There's no printed menu, but unlike the menu cum ordering app suggests you may order from the waiter and pay in person.
Given the fact that their former website on organicpizzaandfood.com was defaced I'd strongly advise to do so.
The marketing on the paper table clothes suggests that the place belongs together with the pizzeria Pizzeria naturale near Porta Garibaldi, but since I did not come here I cannot say to which extend they use organic ingredients. If you don't want to find out yourself (I'm appreciating first-hand accounts), here are two other organic pizza restaurants:
The multinationality of the service staff at Pizza Bio near the Duomo reminds of the fact that pizza may have its origin in Italy but truly is a world heritage: When you book a table or order your food here, don't try to use your handful of Italian vocabulary: Most of the service staff barely speaks Italian themselves, so you may switch to English at once.
There's a huge assortment of pizze – alongside classic ones you'll find those celebrating special Italian ingredients like the burata or the provola cheeses, and there are interesting modernised combinations, but everything with the Italian heritage in mind. Unfortunately there's only one red wine by the glass (a montepulciano) and it remains unclear whether the wines are organic as are most of the pizza ingredients.
If you want to book a table, call in. The place is much bigger than you may think as there is a second guest room in the basement. Despite this size and although the place tries to put eco-friendly measures into action they do not have a printed (or handwritten on a chalk board) menu. Instead you must access the menu on on-line – which given the sheer number of guests is likely to produce more climate emissions than a re-usable rarely changing printed menu.
The pizze were palatable, especially as this was the first restaurant after arrival from abroad. While we were eating a bunch of local policemen on duty stepped by to order food which I'd take for a sign of quality. However, the pizzaiolo killed the sophisticated taste of his high quality ingredients by drowning everything in oil.
Most confusingly there is another pizzeria dubbed
Bio Pizza not too far away, on Corso Italia.
All places mentioned above offer vegan options, but if you are looking for a dedicated vegan organic restaurant, try Radice Tonda in the beautiful Jugend neighbourhood around Porta Venezia which has been here for more than 12 years. There is a second restaurant of the same name near Porta Romana which wasn't open for dinner most of the week when I was there. However, as the restaurant owners warn about regular changes of opening hours it may be advisable to call in in advance.
More to try
I found the following places in the course of my research upfront. But since I haven't come nearby I can neither confirm their existance nor how committed they actually are to organic ingredients.
Closed
2024-10-19 22:45:00
[Milan, Milano, Mailand, Palermo, biologico, organic, vegetarian, vegan, eatery, restaurant, breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, pizza, Italian]
[direct link · table of contents]
Tuesday, 13 September 2022
On a long-distance bike tour like the one from Munich to Venice the challenge is not to know when you will arrive where. So upfront research on the net isn't an option unless you really have lots of time to spend on preparing the tour. So when we arrived in Bruneck at lunch time my backlist contained only one item, a small organic supermarket which not only was closed for the
traditional Italian lunch break, but had closed for good a few monthes ago, in June 2022.
Luckily we found a branch of the South-Tyrolean delicatessen
Pur Südtirol selling regional produce, a majority of certified organic quality. Everything is presented in style, there's an organic bakery till and one for cheese and (not organic) cold cuts. A few gravity bins allow customers to refill dry food (not organic as far as I could see); the fresh fruits and greens were all organic.
There's a nice self-serviced cafe corner offering a daily changing seasonal vegetarian main course. Since we wanted to have our bikes within eye-sight outdoor seating was the only option. Unfortunately all these tables were taken, so we decided to proceed our tour through the Puster valley and take with us rolls, which the friendly service staff filled with cheese and some greens while I was waiting.
Across the main street, Graben, a health-food shop, the
Reformhaus Egger can help to complete supplies.
More to try
Closed
2022-09-13 07:15:01
[The_Conscious_Traveller, Italy, Bruneck, Brunico, Pustertal, Puster_Valley, MuenchenVenezia, organic, biologico, supermarkets, grocery, cafe, eatery, lunch, deli, zero_waste]
[direct link · table of contents]
Wednesday, 31 August 2022
Meat-lovers, be brave in Verona: All the places I found serving organic food are vegetarian or even vegan.
Piu Gusto Bio offers organic breakfast, health food for lunch as well as coffee and cake. They have outdoor seating on the main street, so unless the corona virus forces you to avoid closed rooms it's nicer to sit inside in the pleasantly decorated air-conditioned cafe. For lunch there are tasty sandwiches and daily changing plates with wholefood preparations inspired by the suggestions of the Havard School of Public Health for a healthy eating plate. Around 2pm choice was limited, but the broiled zucchini and fennel, the aubergine-bean mixture and the falafel-style bean balls were very nice and not as bland as health food often uses to be. All food is vegetarian, most of it vegan. While the coffee was nice (well, it's Italy after all), the chocolate cake was dry and crumbly.
More to try
Satisfied there was no need to proceed to the Ziga bar north of the Adige river, in the neighbourhood of Borgo Trento which promises a little more elaborated vegetarian, though only partially organic lunch and dinner, natural wines and organic beer.
For vegan sweets, coffee, a soup or savoury snack I have Dulcamara
bakery cum self-service day cafe on my list, but my time between two trains did not allow for more than one lunch and an ice-cream.
For vegan organic pizza and pasta try La Laterna. Their signature dish is bigoli (thick "spaghetti-like" pasta)
alla carbonara, and I'm curious how they interpret this rather un-vegan recipe in a vegan style.
Probably closed
Some years ago I found the following pizzeria in Borgo Trento on the web, but all references to opening hours have been gone, so I suppose that the place shut down:
2022-08-31 18:00:00
[Verona, organic, biologico, vegan, vegetarian, breakfast, lunch, dinner, restaurant, eatery, cafe, coffee, bakeries]
[direct link · table of contents]
Monday, 29 August 2022
My stays in Verona usually fill the time between two legs of a train ride: Sufficient time for a refreshing organic ice-cream in the old town – in the summer 2022 even for lunch – and to shop travel provisions. The most important learning to begin with: 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon turns out to be the wrong time for a gelato.
My first address is the fully organic ice-cream shop Come una volta ("Just like once upon a time"). When closed the shop, located on a street corner in the old town, looks abandoned, and you may start to feel nervous when a minute before the announced opening hour there's still no light to be seen. Be calm: At the exact hour the shop assistant will arrive, unlock the doors and, within a minute, serve your order: Unusual for an ice-cream parlour the containers with the creamy, well-balanced ice-cream are closed and hidden from the visitor's eyes. Unfortunately the shop is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
If so proceeded to the second best, yet older one: The partially organic ice-cream parlour L'Arte del Gelato has been serving artisanal ice-cream since 2002 using organic sugar, chocolate, mint extract and fruit. The milk is produced by South-Tyrolean farms but not certified organic. I was really looking forward to taste their ice-cream again in 2021 as it had been a lip-smacking creamy experience some years before. But unfortunately I met barred doors, with a display of tempting ice-cream cakes behind since I came there on a Tuesday. In 2022 it seems however that they are back to pre-corona everyday opening hours, but I did not have sufficient time to step by.
On the aforementioned day-trip to Verona I also tried to find Gelateria Natù in the neighbourhood of Santa Croce, with little success which again had to do with a train to catch too soon. Their website was kept up to date until 2020 but I do not know whether they are still serving natural artisanal ice-cream made from organic milk and nuts.
Apart from the milk-based varieties there were some vegan fruit flavours and a number of lactose and glutine free nut and chocolate flavours made with rice drink. Besides they use agave syrup instead of sugar.
You may also come here for a coffee, pastry or aperitif but I cannot say whether you have organic options here. Note that this place obeys the typical Italian closing time around noon.
2022-08-29 21:30:00
[Verona, organic, biologico, vegan, ice-cream, cafe]
[direct link · table of contents]