If you're visiting or moving to Rome and don't want to miss out on the food scene, I hope to provide you with some pitstops from a full Roman dinner to a quick snack or gelato and where to do your shopping! You don't have to feel left out, or embarrassed about expressing your diet choice in most Italian cities. Some people and places will always kick up a fuss or pretend not to understand. We've all heard the same silly questions... "So....can you eat...bread...?" But since Italy's primary industry is tourism, catering to the needs of their international visitors is what businesses do best, and that means adapting to the rise of veganism too. It's true that fundamental to some of Rome's traditional dishes are cheese and meat. 'Cacio e Pepe' is pasta stirred with pecorino cheese and black pepper. Simple, delicious, vegetarian, but not vegan. Carbonara, another Roman speciality requires cheese and guanciale - boar cheek (sorry, -rather graphic perhaps). However, another very famous Roman dish is Carciofi alla Romana or Carciofi alla Giuda. Artichokes with lots of olive oil, in the latter case, deep fried. This is 100% vegan, bingo! Definitely not raw though...Raw foodists should scroll down for a bit. Below, I provide some vegan pitstops for every occasion, but if you do find yourself, as is often the case, stuck in any old Roman trattoria look out for: pasta e ceci or pasta e fagioli. Failing that, get the minestre. These are all soups. The first, with chickpeas and pasta is totally delicious and I can't seem to replicate it at home. The second, pasta with beans, usually borlotti, is equally mysteriously yummy, thick and warming. Finally, you can't go wrong with the third option of a mixed vegetable minestrone, (no pasta). Almost all places will have at least one, if not all of these hearty dishes to leave you satisfied. So, beginning with my hands down favourite place for vegan food in Rome and where you can some of this Roman food whether you're an omnivore, vegetarian or vegan, take a look at this list to have you covered for your trip to Rome! Vegan eats in Rome Classic Roman dinner - Rifugio RomanoFor a real Roman culinary experience go to Rifugio Romano, at the top of Via Nazionale, a 5 minute walk from Termini. They have all the Italian and Roman specialities in both traditional and vegan form. They actually have an entire separate vegan menu. So for those who like exclusive places, there is meat in this restaurant, but they must have a very dedicated and clever vegan chef who can make all the cheesy pizzas, pastas and calzones with vegan ingredients. They also usually have special vegans meals of the day which usually amount to about 10 different dishes involving seitan and tofu cooked in various ways and with various sauces and vegetables. Seitan steaks with creamy mushrooms are a recommendation! Buffet lunch - 100% BioWhen I'm taking a trip to Ostia this is my pitstop for a delicious vegan calzone to go. They always have different fillings of tempeh, setain, tofu and veg, and they're always delightful. At 3€ each, I sometimes take 2 for the whole day! Right in the piazza at Piramide, this is not only 100% vegan but 100% organic as the name suggests. They have everything from coffees, muffins and juices to a sumptuous daily lunch buffet priced on weight. You have to be careful, because it is abundant and a vegan's heaven...but it weighs and before you know it you've got a plate worth double what you intended to pay. A normally large portion might come in at about 14€. On a sunny day it's worth it to sit outside and watch the world go by, plus there's a 10% discount for under 25s and if you come on a bike! Burgers - Flower BurgerIf you're in Rome long enough, you might start wanting something to different to eat and at Flower Burger you can bite down into a beautiful selection of vegan burgers complete colourful home-made bun and potato wedge chips. Not far from the Vatican, if you're famished after a long traipse around the Sistine chapel try stopping by here for a 'cherry bomb' burger! Gelato - Olive DolciThis one is clever. Many gelaterias have dairy free and vegan options sign-posted. Some limit this to just fruit flavours -sorbetti- other's will manage a dark chocolate -fondente- and maybe even a pistachio or other vegan alternative. Olive Dolci has over 30 vegan ice creams to choose from as well as a range of ice lollies and cakes and a very sweet cat. They are all entirely free from animal products and made very cleverly with olive oil (hence the name 'sweet olives'), carob flour, and muscovado sugar. With this many flavours the selection ranges from standard to interesting to outright unusual such as Ginger and Zibibbo! They've recently opened another store and can be found both by Manzoni metro and over in Piazza Cavour. Nuts and fruit - Mercato Vittorio Emanuele Each zone of Rome has a covered market open most days and they all sell fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, cheese and more or less everything you can think of. The area near Termini main station of Esquilino is one largely inhabited by the Asian community of Rome and this makes it my choices for both price and selection. I stock up on beautiful pistachios, cashews, walnuts, herbs, spices, lentils of every colour and every legume you can imagine at unbeatable prices. There's a lot of effortless haggling to be done - by which I mean you ask the price and they lower it 2 euros than the written price so nuts here usually cost around 13€ a kilo whereas in Testaccio market you pay between 20-22€! Afternoon tea with cats - Romeow Cat BistrotIt's hard to decide whether the cats or the food are more beautiful. Firstly I strongly recommend you follow their gorgeous instagram account here for a good dose of heartwarming sunshine. While this bistrot restuarant and 'cat cafe' has top class vegan gourmet chefs, it's that type of fancy food that is amazing to look at and very tasty but just a bit too fussy and small a portion to fill you up for an evening. For this reason -and the slightly but justifiably high price tags- that I prefer this spot to hang out for a tea or hot chocolate (still a little hefty at 4-6€ but they do provide adorable yummy home made biscuits). The decor is beautiful, the staff float with a feline warmth and plant-based gentleness that reminds me a bit of being in a spa. But this spa has furry treatments of soft sweet rescue cats; if you're lucky enough that they should deign to approach you that is! Light lunch - Foodie In Piazza Testaccio, not far from the market where there is a vegan food shop not especially worth going given the vegan options available in many supermarkets, there is a little nameless corner store selling organic vegetables but also juices, soups, salads and even a burger. The name is apparently 'Foodie Fresh Market' but I'm still yet to see it written anywhere. Nothing outstanding but definitely a great tasty vegan option if you're in the area and it's nice to step out and sit in the sunny piazza and watch all the goings-on! Sandwich on the go and RAW options - Manna Not far from Piazza Vittorio Emanuele -admittedly not somewhere you're likely to find yourself on a short trip to Rome- there's this little pit stop with various vegan and vegetarian soups, raw bites and falafel balls, salads and sandwiches as well as all the juices you could want. Not being something that I buy often as I'm a bit wary of vegan dairy alternatives, I went for a sandwich containing vegan cheese and was pleasantly surprised. It was much larger than I expected, on a toasty roll and brimming with filling. Perhaps not the most elegant or homogenous of paninis but definitely filling and good value at €4.50. Where to shop? - NaturasiWhile I don't feel that good about promoting a supermarket chain and I certainly don't do all my shopping here, this is where you can find anything particular vegan if you're looking for it. While the organic fruit, veg and nuts come in at ridiculous prices, rolled oats, plant milks and many other products are very reasonable. The key products I get here are:
This said, almost every other supermarket chain has vegan products available, including vegan burgers -ubiquitous, I don't know why they all think vegans have to eat vegan burgers, - tofu, tofu-based pesto (in the cold section Biffi has a range of 'vegetale' sauces), plant-based milks and also soy or rice-based cooking creams and béchamel sauces which I recently dared to try. It's a little irritating that a vegan ragu costs more than one that requires raising, feeding, cleaning, transporting and slaughtering an animal, but it's because overall for the health conscious Italians veganism is still a sort of trendy posh-mum healthy life choice rather than an ethical one and so in this sense the more expensive the fancier it seems, even if it is a few veg in a blender. -I usually stick to my own sauces for this reason as vegetables can be bought cheaply and abundantly at most street 'Ortofrutta's : Nutrition NoteUnlike in the UK where many breakfast cereals, biscuits, vegetable milks and soy products are fortified with vital nutrients like zinc, iron and B vitamins, in Italy it is extremely rare to find fortified foods. This is a shame for where you once could rely on at least getting a little boost from a bowel of cereal, it turns out that even the soy milk is virtually nutritionally empty. Usually a oats to make porridge sort of person I have now started buying Kellogg's thanks to the added folic acid, iron and B vitamins which is just a reassuring presence for me when I'm feeling a bit unwell or lacking. My favourite would be Bran Flakes, seemingly one of the least processed cereals and it is hilarious to find the chosen name for this product in Italy is 'Nice Morning'! Anyway if you're looking for fortified foods, you'll have to look for imported brands. If Italians still don't know what dishwashers are, you can't expect them to have vitamins in their processed foods. The one addition you'll always find though is iodine in the salt. Tastes a bit strange but is as normal as the addition of fluoride in British water, as the scare of 'iodine deficiency', a leading cause of preventable 'mental retardation' usually more susceptible to remote inland areas is real. A staple for a vegan diet is nutritional yeast, also known as NOOSH apparently, which can be grown in a vitamin B culture to create a tasty topping with a vitamin B source. But once again Italy fails us here and provides (not that)nutrional yeast without the precious Bs. I managed to find a fortified one eventually (more expensive) combined with a malt extract which had a slightly different texture and tangier taste and have eventually come round to it but it doesn't quite work on pasta as a parmesan replacement. Feel free to contact me for more advice about eating in Rome!
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