Vienna

I haven't blogged for a while, mainly because I've been saving my money to go to Vienna! I've wanted to visit for a while, it always looked like a beautiful city and as I've been an avid reader of the Vienna based oh, glorious food blog for a while now I knew there'd be loads of great vegan options in the city.

When a chance came up to hang out with old friend and blogger bazu from Where's the Revolution? (remember my Syracuse trip?), meet the awesome Melanie from oh, glorious food and hang out with some rad old and new PPK friends including Ditte from Veganism Rocks, Luciana from Luciana's Vegan Kitchen and Celine from Have Cake Will Travel there was no way I could resist!

We stayed with Carmen & Joshua, old friends of bazu & Luciana, and new friends of mine and I just wanted to mention what awesome hosts they were - you guys rock!

Now onto the food! The night I arrived we went for dinner at Landia where thankfully someone translated the menu for me as I speak no German. I chose the Schnitzel, a breaded and fried seitan cutlet stuffed with vegan cheese & ham which came with roasted potatoes & a side salad.

The schnitzel was amazing but I think the stars of this meal were the roasted potatoes. They were seriously awesome, perfectly cooked so they kinda melted in your mouth. I know they're 'just potatoes', how can they be so different to any other potato? I don't know exactly what the chef did to them but seriously they were amazing!

The next day we left Vienna for a few days and headed to Bratislava & Budapest but that's a whole other blog post so do excuse the chronologically confused nature of my blogging!

I was really excited to try a croissant at Backerei Waldherr and they certainly didn't disappoint.

This wholewheat croissant is not only dipped in chocolate but also filled with raspberry jam - my absolute favourite sweet combination!

We spent the day sightseeing and I got to visit one of Europe's oldest Ferris Wheels at the Prater.

I love a ferris wheel! see how happy I am...

...anyway enough of this, let's get back to the foodie bit!

We visited Formosa for lunch, I was super excited by their menu especially when I realised they had a vegan version of Calamari.

I was never that into meat but I did used to enjoy fish many years ago before I was vegetarian. This was (from what I can recall) a pretty good replica of this squid based meal. I think the actual fishy bit was made with a very firm tofu and it was really good.

I was pretty hungry so I also ordered the fish & chips.

This wasn't the most well rounded meal of the trip but all this fried goodness was awesome! Formosa not only has a very decently sized menu written in both German and English but they also have a vegi store attached selling all sorts of delicious vegan cheeses, biscuits, gummy sweets, fake meats and Vital Wheat Gluten, which is really hard to find in Europe.

That night we hit up vegetarian bar Rupps. Not only is this place super cool, covered in rad posters and they play decent-ish music but the food's awesome, the service is amazing and, if you're into this kind of thing, they serve over 400 types of whiskey and a good selection of vegan beers and ciders!

I chowed down on the Haustoast a grilled cheese sandwich, I'd say this was the best grilled cheese sandwich I've ever eaten.

Just look at that melty, cheesy goodness! I also tried the garlic soup with croutons...

This was SO damn garlicky, it was perfect! I cannot wait to visit Vienna and Rupps again, there were so many other things on the menu I'd like to try and I can't stress enough just how great the staff were, especially as there were over 20 of us!

The next day after some time at the MAK we took a walk through the Naschmarkt, Vienna's huge open market, to hunt down the other vegan croissant location. Once we arrived they'd sold out but they did have these wholewheat jam-filled cookies which kept the hunger pains at bay for a few hours.

After the market we couldn't resist heading back to Formosa to try the fried shrimp and pommes frites and they certainly didn't disappoint.

We also headed back to Landia late Saturday afternoon for a PPK meet up. There were about 25 of us from all over Europe and we had a damn good time, ate loads of delicious food and some of us partook in some vodka & mango juices!

I couldn't resist more of the best potatoes ever so ordered another schnitzel based meal.

This time there were two breaded seitan steaks with the potatoes and it was again delicious.

Last but not least on my way to the airport we managed to fit in lunch at one location of the city-wide chain of vegetarian Taiwanese restaurants, Vegetasia. They have an a la carte menu but we all went for the buffet as it was pretty cheap at about €9.

Here we have a bowl of miso soup next to a plate full of mini meaty vegetable skewers, gyoza dumplings, noodles with stir fried vegetables & tofu, spring rolls and sushi - both vegetable and ''fish''. We all agreed the smoked salmon sushi was creepily realistic but aside from that everything was delicious, I went back for way too many dumplings and if I hadn't had to leave I could have stayed for hours stuffing my face with their fried awesomeness!

I cannot wait to get back to Vienna as there are a few vegan places I didn't get to and I need to revisit all of the awesome places from this trip. I'm actually planning on learning German as I think Vienna and Berlin are my two favourite European cities and I'd love to be able to translate the menus and labels all by myself next time.

Next time Bratislava & Budapest!