Saturday, 18 May 2019
When you're captured in the boring conference centre Moa-Bogen (not far from the Berlin main train station, Hauptbahnhof) where not even the tea bags in the conference area are organic (with the notable exception of one type of simple black tea which was available from one single tea bag dispenser) all you want is to go for a stroll at lunch time.
But this is not Kreuzberg and it's not so easy to find organic food options. What I discovered in the vicinity were two vegan day cafes with more or less limited use of organic ingredients, both not more than a five minutes walk away (though in opposite directions).
Around Birkenstraße tube station
For cheap and simple, filling vegan food find the ice-cream-shaped neon light of
vegan Café Geh Veg next to the Birkenstraße tube station (the name is a mesh up of the literal translation of "go veg", the German word for pedestrian way -- Gehweg -- and the German phrase "Geh weg!" meaning "go away"). This small and somewhat shabby place serves breakfast until 2 pm as well as black bean burgers, salads, bagels, wraps and cakes. Unfortunately it’s only partially organic: The bagels, the tempeh and the soy and the oat drinks are organic, most of the tea bags and soft drinks are, too, but veges, yogurt alternatives and the ice-cream usually are not. The coffee is even cheap conventional supermarket fare.
Questions about the origin of the ingredients were dealt with in a friendly way, but the staff does not seem to be very knowledgeable. Note that the toilets are next door.
For way nicer surroundings in Spanish style walk in opposite direction: Directly located at the pleasant retreat of Stephansplatz with a nice children's playground surrounded by Wilhelminian style houses you'll find Valladares Feinkost. It's not only a
100% vegan café, but
also a small organic grocery selling organic dry products, dairy alternatives, wines, lemonades, water and even natural cosmetics.
The coffee is roasted in town but not organic, the plant-based drinks are.
According to the barrista fresh veges used in the dishes would usually be organic, but there's no commitment to what's organic and what not. Unfortunately the cakes aren't.
The oat-drink-based cappuccino I found too sweet (due to the brand), so here the one from Geh Veg was better, despite the inferior coffee.
Alt-Moabit
From Birkenstraße take the U9 tube one stop to Turmstraße, and you're in the heart of Old Moabit, with busy shopping streets and pleasant residential areas. Here you'll find
the Domberger Brot-Werk, a true
artisanal bakery with an open bakehouse as part of the shop. It smells deliciously here and you may be surprised by the limited selection of items -- just a few types of bread and rolls, and one type of cake if you come in time for the latter. But the taste! I still regret that I did not buy a loaf of bread to take with me, since the Bavarian-style pretzl I had was overwhelmingly tasty: fresh from the oven, with an intense flavour of wheat and baking stone (although Bavarians would probably complain about the softness). The bakery itself is not certified organic, but uses
certified organic flour, eggs, and milk. The fruit for the cake and other ingredients come from the Kreuzberger Markthalle 7 and may not be organic. Needless to say that you can have a coffee, too, probably also in front of the place when the weather is nice.
For 100% organic ice-cream head for the
Eisbox ice-cream parlour a few corners away. Unfortunately I run short of time, so share your experience with me if you come here.
There's also an organic supermarket of the small Berlin-based LPG chain a few meters further west which also offers fully organic lunch. Their bakery counter opens an hour before the supermarket, at 7am.
The LPG groceries are organised as a co-operative with a focus on regional producers and neighbourhood welfare, offering discounts to its members. Its name matches the common abbreviation for the agricultural production cooperatives in former East Germany.
At the main train station
Within the city's huge main train station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof (which you can reach within a few minutes on the TXL bus from the Turmstraße stop located on Alt-Moabit street) it's hard to find a supplier of organic provisions (you'll have to fall back to the conventional Rewe supermarket or the Rossmann drugstore and check for organic labels). I could not find any eatery using organic ingredients, but you can at least have organic coffee drinks and tea at the Pret a manger self-service cafe. When you enter the station from the southern exit at Washingtonplatz this is the first place to the left. They use fresh organic milk from the Bavarian Andechser dairy, but unfortunately none of their cakes, cookies, sandwiches and other own-brand snacks are organic.
Closed
2019-05-18 18:00:00
[Berlin, Moabit, organic, vegan, cafe, restaurant, eatery, coffee, ice-cream, supermarkets, grocery, bakeries]
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Tuesday, 30 October 2018
The impression may be due to my lack of command of the Hungarian language, but most places in Budapest advertising the use of organic produce surely aim at the affluent tourist -- carefully designed places offering sophisticated Hungarian kitchen, vegan food or the ubiquitous expensive Italian coffee machine and hand-made organic sandwiches and cakes. What they all have in common: gorgeous food, a relaxed and (family-) friendly atmosphere and the complete absence of red-nosed binge-drinking tourists.
To dine in style head for the golden-blue shimmering premises of Hilda Food and Mood in Lipótváros
serving carefully modernized standards of the Hungarian farmers' kitchen like the
goulash soup or
chicken paprikash with dumplings as well as advanced sandwiches or salads. The focus here clearly is on organic meat from responsibly raised animals, grilled to the point, but vegetarians are catered for with equal love, with often organic greens, crisp or perfectly done. There's also a selection of organic soft drinks and wines.
Unfortunately the restaurant is closed on Sunday evenings but you may also come here for breakfast, brunch or lunch, and if only to marvel at the grand-hotel flair, the mosaic walls, and the dusky pink-golden restrooms.
Just a few corners in Eastern direction you'll find Naspolya Nassolda, a light and clean cafe serving raw, vegan, gluten-free sweets, savoury snacks, healthy drinks and coffee, using a great deal organic ingredients. Prepackaged wafers and cookies from the shop can also be bought from the BioABC supermarket.
If you feel for a more lively coffee house atmosphere find your way to the Vörösmarty utca metro station in Terezváros and enter a stunning neo-renaissance building of the World Heritage Site of Andrassy avenue to find the Ecocafe.
This cafe could be transfered to any other Western metropolis, and you wouldn't notice -- the Italian-style coffee drinks, the wooden tables, the hand-made croissants and sandwiches, the freshly pressed smoothies and small glass bottles with juice, the clean and understated eco design, the families, the students and the digital nomads, a welcoming, yet non-intrusive atmosphere -- it's all here, and you'll feel at home at once.
And the best of it all: The place keeps open on national public holidays like St. Stephen's day when everything else (including the main post office within Keleti pu.) is closed.
Right in the vicinity of Keleti station you may check out the Mennyország Szíve Bio Bolt for lunch or snacks, or -- hopefully soon again -- the
Házikó Bisztro ("farm bistro") which currently is closed. Both are closed on weekends and public holidays. The Házikó has a second branch in Buda on the premises of the socially and environmentally responsible MagNet bank. Here you can have not only a coffee, but also lunch, snacks or an early dinner made from predominantly organic local produce according to season.
More to try
During my research I also found the following places that seemed likely to (at least partially) serve organic food and drinks, but I did not had the time to try them myself. If you do so let me know whether they are worth to be listed here!
Temporarily closed
2018-10-30 17:00:00
[Budapest, organic, lunch, dinner, coffee, restaurant, cafe, eatery, vegan]
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Friday, 21 September 2018
Astonishingly many of the artisanal ice-cream parlours in town present their products in the hygienically correct way for the storage of unadultered natural ice-cream, and the city seems to be a heaven for vegan ice-cream lovers. However, and this is the bad news, there seems to be no such thing as fully (bio-)organic ice-cream. But there are places using organic milk.
One of them is a major tourist spot next to Szent István (St. Stephen's) cathedral. With the impressive queue in front of
Gelarto Rosa on hot summer days there's often no need to watch out for the art nouveau-styled rose sign priding the entrance (see image) -- you simply can't miss the place. All dairy flavours here are made from organic milk, and there are fruity, vegan flavours, too, though without the promise on the use of organic fruit. Your dish of ice-cream is skillfully made into a rose which helps justifying the hefty price:
A small rose made of two flavours comes at 700 Ft., the medium one with three flavours at 800 Ft., and a large rose with four flavours and three rows of petals at 900 Ft.
If you don't insist on dairy ice-cream you may skip the queue and walk around the corner along Szent István tér. Only a fews steps away you'll find a second branch dubbed
Gelarto Rosa Bistro -- vegan hedonism. It is in fact a small bistro with outdoor seating serving vegan bowls, sandwiches and desserts predominantly made from organically produced (though not necessarily certified) ingredients from local farmers as well as Italian-style coffee. On summer days however you will rarely notice the food since the focus is on ice-cream roses. As in the older shop around the corner, first queue at the cash counter, specify the size of your ice-cream and pay upfront, then move on to the ice-cream desk and order the flavours. Here you'll find predominantly vegan sorbets, although you might spot one, at maximum two dairy flavours, too, and the queue is significantly shorter than the one around the corner. With food and coffee orders you will be served (after having paid at the cash desk) at your table.
For a much less touristy place head for the Buda side of the Danube river:
Kedves Krém ("lovable cream") in
Víziváros, a few corners from Széll Kálmán tér is a lovely neighbourhood ice-cream parlour cum cafe most frequented by locals.
The creamy, all-natural dairy ice-cream here comes at 270 Ft. the scoop. With clearly accentuated flavours and stored in deep, steel-covered containers used by only the most serious artisanal ice-cream makers this is definitely the best ice-cream I had in Budapest. Unfortunately I couldn't get a confirmation for whether all ingredients were organic, most likely most of them, first of all milk and cream are sourced from local farms working according to organic principles. If you speak Hungarian and are able to inquire in depth, let me know about it.
2018-09-21 20:00:00
[Budapest, organic, vegan, ice-cream, cafe, eatery, coffee, snacks, lunch]
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Monday, 08 January 2018
An inner-city district to be developed from scratch is the most exciting thing in the life of city planners, and Hamburg's Hafencity with its recently opened Elbphilharmonie concert hall is Europe's biggest inner-city development in modern times. When finished it will consist of ten often quite different neighbourhoods, with many sustainability aspects considered.
If you have the time take part in one of the guided tours (free of charge) or pay a visit to the Sustainability Pavillion Osaka 9. The latter houses a small fair-trade cafe bar dubbed Die kleine Elbfaire where you can have a coffee or soft drink and buy pre-packaged fairly traded sweets.
With its name drawing from the similarity of the words "fair" and "Fähre" ("ferry") the little coffee bar is a spin-off of
Elbfaire, a fair-trade lunch cafe and meeting place with a pleasant backyard run by the ecumenical association of 17 Hamburg-based churches. On weekdays you can come here for an organic vegetarian lunch between
12 am and 14:30 pm, or step by for a fairly traded organic coffee drink together with home-made organic cakes.
Another organic lunch option is the self-service day cafe of the nearby Alnatura supermarket.
Not organic
When looking for healthy organic food in the Hafencity you may be guided to
Greenlovers, a lunch restaurant serving soups, stews, bowls and salads using predominantly locally sourced ingredients. Unfortunately the promising name is misleading since the place does not have an organic agenda. However, I was assured that tofu and eggs always were organic, and if you dare to ask you may occasionally find one or another organic vegetable used in the dishes. There's a second branch near the townhall with longer opening hours, keeping open Monday through Saturday until 7 pm.
2018-01-08 12:30:00
[Hamburg, Hafencity, organic, fair, vegetarian, eatery, cafe, lunch, supermarkets, coffee]
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Saturday, 30 December 2017
Norwegian smalltowns can be a frustrating experience for those used to organic food, hunting-gathering the nation-wide chains as described here. What a surprise when I spent the time waiting for a bus in Steinkjer with a stroll through the town's main street, Kongens gate. Five minutes from the train station you'll find Grønn bølge ("Green Wave"), a small friendly organic convenience store cum day cafe where you not only can buy daily supplies (surprisingly much of it from local producers, including a small selection of fresh seasonal fruit and veges) but also have a smoothie, plain coffee, home-made cookie or seasonal soup. Until 2016 the shop was located in a side street a few steps away.
For a more substantial meal in the afternoon or evening simply cross the street.
Here you'll find Ox Steak House, where you can have grilled or cured beef, burgers (with home-made buns), sausages, and more from free-ranging highland cattle from a small-scale farm about 15 kilometers north-west. The animals are allowed to keep their horns, but neither the farm nor the restaurant is certified organic. The place was however recommended to me by another local farmer in the course of an exchange on free-range and organic farming. You can also order food to take away.
To dine in style at a decidedly committed organic farm you'll have to book in advance and take a taxi 12 kilometers out of town to Bjerkem organic farm and cultural heritage centre. Since September 2017 the farm has been playing host to the new organic gourmet restaurant of acclaimed Norwegian (formerly London-based) chef Kim Tore Sjøbakk, the Experience.
The
tasting menu consisting of 14 courses comes at
1250 NOK per person, together with matching wine and drinks at 2250 NOK. Unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to dine there yet, so let me know about your experience.
Closed
- Grønn bølge, Svein Jarls gt. 1 (convenience store)
2017-12-30 14:00:07
[Steinkjer, organic, supermarkets, grocery, eatery, restaurant, burgers, fastfood]
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