Best Countries for Vegetarians?

41 comments

1. Definitely not Germany. Austria even less.

   Also proper(tm) belgian fries aren’t really vegetarian, cause at least one of the fry processes is made with animal far.

   Edit: After several people pointed out that this is no big problem in germany and austria I looked for numbers. And I was surprised. I honestly thought the percentage was rather low, but both are under the countries with the higher ones. Damn, I always feel like if I don’t wanna eat meat in a restaurant that I got basically no good option here in Westphalia (and before that where I lived in Tyrol).

2. I am a lifelong vegetarian, although unlike a lot of Indian vegetarians I eat eggs.

   For “native” cuisine I agree that Italy wins. Pretty much every region has its own pantheon of wonderful vegetarian-friendly dishes. Poland also has surprisingly good, hearty food – check out the beetroot soups (barszcz), the dumplings (pierogi) and the spinach pancakes.

   The UK and the German-speaking world are also very easy for vegetarians, but only because they have so much non-native cuisine. They’re probably the only countries other than Italy or Poland (maybe the Netherlands as well?) where you’ll have more than one or two options on the menu. If you’re in the UK I’d definitely recommend a Cornish pastie or some kind of nice pie with gravy. Around Christmas time it’s worth getting a nut roast. The South-West of Germany has some pretty nice native vegetarian food – check out the Maultaschen (dumplings), the Spätzle (egg pasta) and the Zwiebelkuchen (onion tart).

   France really depends on the region. In the South-West, good luck finding anything that isn’t either pizza, French tacos or Poke bowls. Brittany has some lovely savoury buckwheat pancakes (galettes), but that’s pretty much the *only* thing they have that isn’t going to give you cardiac arrest after a few days. Alsace has by far the most variety outside Paris – very similar cuisine to SW Germany except they also have *Flammekueche*, which is kind of like creamy thin-crust pizza.

   Central/Eastern Europe are actually easier than you might imagine. In the Balkans you can live off *Burek*, which is a kind of spinach/cheese pastry I guess. In Hungary there’s also *Langos* (fried dough with cheese, garlic and sour cream) but sadly it’s also extremely bad for you.

   I hear good things about Bulgaria, but I’ve never been there.

   The worst country is Portugal, hands down.

   Edit: I’m getting a lot of responses saying “But that dish has meat in it!”. I am of course referring to the vegetarian versions of those dishes, which are quite commonly available alongside their traditional non-veg equivalents. Talk to your waiter.

3. [removed]

4. It’s hard to say which are best as in every major European city you’ll find a lot of vegetarian restaurants serving a lot of different dishes. Typical Polish cuisine is heavily based on meat but year after year Warsaw is named one of the best cities for vegans and vegetarians in the world, there’s just a lot of fancy vegetarian restaurants here and basically 99% restaurants offer really good vegetarian options, meaning full vege main course, not some set of side dishes.

   All in all you’ll find plenty of absolutely delicious vegetarian stuff to eat in every European country.

5. I don’t know if they are the best for that, but in my experience the UK, Germany, Austria, Poland and Sweden are pretty good as a vegetarian.

6. In Sweden it works in big cities or student cities. Trying to find variations of vegetarian food in Säffle (for exempel, sorry Säffle) might be problematic. There your best bet is probably a vegetarian pizza.

7. I’m a vegetarian since around 15 years, and a lot of things have changed here. Swiss cuisine is often pretty meat heavy, but by now most traditional restaurants have at least one or two vegetarian alternatives to meat dishes (better chance in urban areas).There are non-meat based dishes though, such as älplermagronen, fondue, raclette, some quiches, and a lot of soups. Still though, I’d go for foreign cuisines when looking for a wide variety of vegetarian dishes.

   Switzerland’s super markets offer a huge variety of vegetarian/vegan products though, so when cooking for yourself it’s completely fine. There was a huge shift towards havinge more ‘fake’-meat during the last decade.

8. Definitely not Germany. The Maultaschen mentioned are filled with meat.

9. Southern regions are better simply because you can grow more vegetables there. In the north you grow only wheats and potatoes, which you feed to the animals and then eat the animals.

10. [deleted]

11. If you go with classic Swedish food you can choose between pancakes and porridge and that is basically it. Most vegetarian dishes here come from other places, but a lot of resturants (usually expensive ones) have also began inventing new, and adapting old, dishes.

    So most resturants do have decent vegitarian menues.

12. The Netherlands has the best supermarkts for vegans and vegetarians

13. There’s a lot of vegetarian food in Romania, especially traditional food. We just call it “de post” since historically it was food you were allowed to eat during religious fasts, like before Christmas or Easter

    Here are around 300 recipes, with pictures: https://divainbucatarie.ro/2014/03/08/retete-de-post/

14. It’s really easy being a vegetarian in Finland. And probably not easy in Portugal. I don’t know about about other countries as I haven’t lived elsewhere.

15. Nobody mentioned Greece and I am surprised. I went to Athens in 2018 and was surprised by the number of vegetarian/vegan options I had there, I don’t know why Greek restaurants outside of Greece don’t have many veggie options. Here I am not talking about Greek salads.

16. Probably Mongolia. It has large stretches of land where you can pasture all you like.

    But a serious answer: In most Western European countries the vegetarian options are decent enough. Most restaurant here have enough decent vegetarian options, although obviously it varies per restaurant.

17. The UK is great for it. I was a vegetarian for years (even vegan for a while) and there were always options for me whenever I ate out. Only reason I had to stop was because of some health issues.

    I agree that Italy is good in that a lot of their traditional dishes don’t have meat, but if you’re vegetarian for ethical reasons it’s still quite hard to find good options there because a lot of their cheeses contain rennet (Parmesan and Pecorino come to mind)

18. Not Portugal lol. That’s not to say that you can’t find vegetarian options, but there’s always much less on offer compared to meat/fish. My sister and mother are vegetarian and they’ve always managed to find something to eat, even if it means asking the restaurant if they can prepare something for them. Proper vegetarian meals and/or vegetarian variants of classic dishes are becoming more and more popular though (and the same goes for vegan options).

19. I’m a lifelong vegetarian. I’ve never had problems in Finland or Switzerland, and absolutely love Slovenia and it’s food. I’ve visited several times around the country and never had any issues. I never felt like I had to search for suitable food. Also didn’t have trouble with gluten free food either.

20. Well, if you come to Hungary, the issue will be restaurants.

    Our cousine does have vegetarian options – the wide variety of “főzelék” (vegetable stews) stands out in particular. But ofc. there is no shortage of options in other categories.

    The real issue is that these are seen as “budget options”, for historic reasons.
    While they are nice, they were staple for people who couldn’t afford to put meat on the table every day.
    As such its not every restuarant that has them on the menu.

    And ofc. even fewer of those restaurants make them good.

21. Greece.
    Many of the greek traditional dishes are vegetarian or can be made without any meats.

    Also, we mostly use vegetable oils, olive and sunflower and not butter.

22. I can’t say about fasting, but Russia has a lot of non-meat dishes, because traditionally meat wasn’t widely available to peasants as day-to-day food.

    Just a short list:

    * `Винегрет` (which has nothing to do with french balsamic at all, just a name)
    * `Варенники`
    * `щи`, and `кислые щи` (two different soups)
    * `зелёный борщ` (absolutely different dish from `борщ`)
    * `крапивник` (a soup from nettle)
    * `кабачковая икра`
    * `квашенная капуста` (not a main dish, but hard to stop eating)
    * `гурьевская каша` (buckwheat with mushrooms)
    * `окрошка` (mushroom variety, original required some Mortadella sausages)
    * `пирожки`: with potatoes, with mushrooms
    * `гороховый суп` (again, without meat, with mushrooms)
    * `блины` (not vegan, but vegetarian, butter required)
    * `запеканка`
    * `сырники`
    * `земляника со сливками` (don’t mix up with garden strawberry, it’s wild)
    * `компот из облепихи`
    * `квас`

    And do not miss a good ‘rye bread’ as a side dish.

    almost forget: `жарёха с грибами`

23. If you come to Germany simply go to an Italian restaurant. Those are even more common than traditional German restaurants. Because, uh, we know how to do German dishes. No need to eat those in restaurant quality.

24. I’d say Greece, their national cuisine is built on veggie dishes

25. I know everyone kinda bullies the U.K. for our food, but I think we have to be the obvious answer.

    We’re probably one of the most liberal and vegetarian/vegan toward countries in Europe. There’s plenty of vegan restaurants here and plenty of Indian restaurants here too, which often have a varied vegetarian menu. You can often get vegan and vegetarian food quite easily in Thai and chinese restaurants, as they make use of tofu quite a lot

26. It’s not a per country thing, really.

    Germany’s traditional cuisine is pork, potatoes and cabbage and you’ll have a ton of regions where traditional places serve mostly that. But Germany also includes Berlin, probably among the top cities for vegetarian stuff.

    Same goes with France, in smaller cities and in the country you’ll have issues finding good/varied options, but if you go to any major city you’ll have plenty.

    You have to realize that a country/region’s traditional food isn’t the only thing you can eat there, thankfully.

    Still, Greece and Italy are probably the best bets – although some regions of Italy are really meat-focused, like Sardegna.

27. To me, limiting the answer at the country level gives a false impression: it really depends on the cities/regions.

    Having said that, more northern European countries often have easily available veggie options. Countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, etc where it is really easy to find vegetarian options in cities. In the countryside can be a different story.
    Italy as you already mentioned also has naturally a cuisine with a lot of vegetarian options (but vegan is rarer than in more northern places).

    At the opposite end of the spectrum, typical food from France, Spain, Portugal or the Balkans is often meat-heavy and a dish almost often consists of meat/fish with sides so it might be a bit harder to find vegetarian options, however in tourist places and big cities it is not a problem.

    EDIT: re reading your post, what I mentioned was the ease to find restaurants with vegetarian options, but not necessarily country culture restaurants. For example, it is amazingly easy to be vegan/vegetarian in Berlin. However, it will almost never be German food, it will be burgers or Asian food.

28. The UK has plenty of vegetarian and vegan options. There is also a large Indian community, so if you want to eat any Indian cuisine, the UK is definitely the best place to do it in Europe.

29. Not Spain but we have some vegetarian friendly meals https://www.tasteatlas.com/best-rated-vegetarian-dishes-in-spain

30. The UK is actually really good for this. Pretty much every restaurant will have vegetarian dishes or even vegan options these days on the menu.

    London is extremely good for this with many fully vege or vegan restaurants there too.

    [UK has one of the highest vegetarian restaurant per captia in Europe.](https://www.dailymint.co/images/uploads/europe-map-vegan-vegetarian.jpg)

31. The U.K. is very good for vegan and vegetarian options, especially in London. Vegetarianism has quite a long history here and it’s been socially acceptable for perhaps longer than in a lot of other cultures. It is common now to find vegetarian and vegan versions of a variety of foods including some of our traditional meaty dishes like Sunday roast or shepherd’s pie.

32. I’ve travelled around much of Europe and in terms of ease of access with nearly every restaurant guaranteed to have one or two vegetarian main courses, Ireland and the UK are the winners, with most cities having several vegetarian only restaurants as well. You can basically go anywhere without planning ahead and find something good to eat. The exception being Italian restaurants who often just have pasta with sauce(unlike Italy itself which has great veggie food)

    The absolute worst is France where staff will basically demean you for even asking in a lot of places.

33. Don’t go: Portugal, Spain, FRANCE, Germany.. all countries I struggled to find food while traveling. Even in gas stations.

34. Mediterranean cuisines use plenty of vegetables, your safest bets other than Italy are Spain, Greece, Portugal and Turkey.

35. It depends wether one is looking for traditional vegetarian cuisine or vegetarian/vegan products. I’d say Finland, Germany and UK are the best for vegan products in grocery stores and most consistent for finding vegetarian things on the restaurant menus, but not necessarily the best for traditional cuisine. Estonia, Netherlands and Sweden are good for this too.

    From cuisine perspective I’d say Italy and Greece are great. I don’t find Eastern Europe super easy despite the passover tradition, mainly because I’m tired of eating side dishes.

    Georgia was fantastic and my favourite, they have amazing traditional vegetarian and vegan dishes (and I regret being vegan at the time and not trying cheesy khachapuri)

36. Interested in topic, yet meat-eater/all in my 50’s.
    I want to stay up-to-date with current things.

37. Here in Portugal you’ll find plenty of vegetarian places in Lisbon/Porto/Algarve. Everywhere else, well not so much since most of our cuisine is usually based either on fish or meat although there are some regional variations of dishes that are vegetarian like “Ervilhas com Ovos Escalfados” which is basically a pea broth/soup (can be fava beans too) with eggs poached in the broth itself. Or Tomatada which is a type of tomato soup also with a few poached eggs. We eat a lot of eggs basically.

38. Sweden maybe. There is a lot of vegetarian food to choose from.

39. Finland is very good for vegans and vegetarians. I’ve had problems finding food as vegan in continental Spain, Canarias and Ireland.

40. I’m a vegetarian since more than 20 years, and I think that the vegetarian options at restaurants here in Sweden are really good and only getting better with time. So much has happened in this time.

    Even though you will of course find the largest variation of vegetarian alternatives at restaurants in the larger cities and university towns, even restaurants in small towns will generally at least one or even a few vegetarian options on the menu, and usually of decent quality. It extremely rarely happens that I don’t find anything at all that I can eat and have to go somewhere else.

    Vegetarianism and veganism are both relatively popular in Sweden, and have been around for a really long time. And since it has been around for so long, there is a large age span of vegetarians here with very different preferences, ranging from teenagers to people in their 60s and older. We of course also have a very large immigrant population in Sweden, and especially a very large Muslim population, who often also prefer vegetarian dishes when eating out. So in short, most restaurant simply can’t afford to miss out by not catering to these large and diverse groups of people.

41. Sounds stupid, but the poorer eastern European countries cook a lot of stuff vegetarian or even vegan, for the simple reason people could barely afford meat. They have lots of very tasty soups, stews and bottled vegetables.
    You can get great food there but i cant really recommend to travel there either. It can be a Bit Dangerous and you should inform yourself very properly where to go there and which parts you should avoid.

    Romania, bulgaria, serbia and so on. Ex soviet countries…