Travel Tip Tuesday - Zagreb: Stores and More

This is the last of my Vegan MoFo 2013 Travel Tip Tuesday posts and today I'm continuing the virtual tour of Zagreb I began last week.

We were stoked to find that super vegan friendly health food store chain bio & bio had a location a short walk from the central apartment we'd rented for the week.

On our first visit we chatted to a vegan guy working there who not only pointed out everything vegan for us but also gave us a great tip about what turned out to be our favourite restaurant. On that visit I bought a few breakfast items - bread rolls, spreads, yoghurts as well as baked tofu for snacking, a delicious tofu sandwich, a cookie and a slice of cake. When we visited all of the cakes and sandwiches in the fridge were vegan.

We think that these cakes were made by the people at our favourite restaurant, Zrno, and I really enjoyed this slice which seemed to be made out of super thin layers of almost pancake like cake interspersed with agave sweetened chocolate mousse. It was delicious. 

This smoked seitan sandwich was another favourite of mine although I liked the smoked tofu salad one even more.

Croatioa is also a veritable gold mine for accidentally vegan sweet treats. We saw all three of these chocolates in stores all over the city, from the speciality places like Kras to the regular old corner store. The Bajadera were my favourites, they were so sweet and creamy that I'd imagine people could find it hard to believe that they're vegan!

Napolitanke are another accidentally vegan Croatian speciality and I particularly enjoyed the cherry flavour made by Koestlin. Also vegan are Kras brand Napolitanke in Lemon Orange, Nougat and Chocolate.

We were excited to see that just like in Western Europe Croatia have a wonderful selection of Alpro products including some that were totally new to us like these Speculoos desserts...

...and red fruit flavoured soya milk.

We were tipped off before our trip that Croatian bakery chain MLINAR have two accidentally vegan pastries, the Burek S Višnjama and the Burek S Jabukama. We picked up both and whilst the Burek S Višnjama was, as expected, cherry filled, the Burek S Jabukama which we had expected to be filled with apples was full of something that looked and apparently tasted like cheese curds. We're not sure if the recipe had changed or if the person working simply passed us the wrong burek. I thought the cherry was pretty great though, the pastry was definitely on the greasy side but I enjoyed it and I'd definitely eat it again.

Hand model credit to Melanie.

We also visited the vast and wonderfully colourful dolac market. Outside every stall was bursting with fruit and veg that the farmers had brought in from their farms that morning.

We also wandered the streets checking out the fantastic architecture...

...and squeezed in visits to great museums. We all enjoyed the quirky Museum of Broken Relationships...

...and I had a wonderful time at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and not just because I went on the slides four times whilst my travel companions sipped coffee like real adults after their slightly more sensible one go.

Zagreb also has many wonderful cafe bars and a great tradition of spending Sunday afternoons sitting outside them and people watching. I enjoyed many of these vegan friendly grapefruit radlers at our favourite spot, Kino Europa, and I hope to see them making an appearance in UK stores soon.

This was a wonderful trip, I love these ladies and I love Zagreb. I hope to go back one day and I would strongly recommend it to any vegans planning Eastern European travels.