The Crumby Vegan in Vilnius

Posted on by The Crumby Vegan Posted in Food/Nutrition, TravelTagged , , , , , , , ,

Wonderful Husband and I were lucky enough to be invited to the wedding of our mega friends Lovely Harman and Lovely Brigita. Best of all, the wedding was being held in Vilnius, Lithuania. I love a location wedding!

As well as wanting to celebrate the union of two mega friends, I totally wanted to check out the vegan food in Vilnius. You’d expect it to be all about meat, meat and meat right? Prepare yourself to be surprised. 

We had an amazing time eating our way around Vilnius, check out the mega places below 🙂 

Brussels Airport, Belgium – EXKi

Yep, I know what you’re thinking: Brussels isn’t in Lithuania, it isn’t even close but…

My trip started with an incredibly early flight to Vilnius via Brussels. I was super hungry and began to explore the airport during my short wait between flights. I couldn’t believe my luck when I found EXKi. There were several vegan options but I struck gold when I found my sandwich: smoked tofu, carrots and seaweed tartare. I hate flying but this made the experience that tiny bit more enjoyable.

Ezki

Rosehip Bistro

After an amazing walking tour around the city centre, Wonderful Husband and I had worked up quite an appetite and headed over to a highly recommended vegan burger bar: The Rosehip Bistro. Their menu was fantastic and it was incredibly hard to choose but in the end we shared yummy vegan nachos and I had a portobello burger that had a beautiful cheesy, mayonnaise-y sauce, totally my kind of thing. We stuffed ourselves with the loveliness so much that we couldn’t eat dessert.

The food doesn’t actually have a pink tint to it, we were just under a pink light 🙂 

Vegafe

We are so used to Spanish time, where you head to a restaurant at 20:30-21:00 for dinner (or even later!) so it was quite hard to adapt to the idea of having an early dinner, as most of the restaurants in Vilnius were closing their kitchens by 20:30. Fortunately for us Vegafe was open until 22:00 and even better, their food was yummy! The staff there were lovely and the restaurant had a very calm atmosphere.

Vegafe doesn’t sell alcohol (to Wonderful Husband’s disappointment) but they did offer the most wonderful home-made ginger lemonade – it was super spicy! For dinner we shared a huge plate of gyozas and then I had a tofu steak with rice and salad. Who said vegans don’t get enough protein?!

Beigelistai

Our second day of the trip was all about seeing Vilnius by visiting vegan-friendly places (check out the map!).Map We had our walking shoes strapped on tightly and with a hunger in our bellies we began our journey. 

Our first stop was at Beigelistai for some breakfast. I loved the setting of this super quaint cafe as it was on a street near Užupis (Vilnius’ art district) next to a wall dedicated to authors that wrote about Lithuania – how cool!?

We both went for the peanut butter and banana bagel. It came with yummy chunky peanut butter, slices of bananas and the most wonderfully tasty, chewy bagel that had been toasted and ready for self-assembly. We both loved our bagel and I was super disappointed that we didn’t have time to return. I have been desperately craving bagels since!

 

 

Boho Cafe (Boho Kavine)

Our second stop was at Boho Cafe, quite a walk away from the main town but totally worth it. A few steps down led you into a small cafe filled to the brim with uni students feasting on yummy veggie lunches. We arrived too late for lunch so instead we grabbed a pastry and fruit juice. It was yummy and perfect for a short stop on our tiny food tour of Vilnius.

Chaika

This was, without a doubt, Wonderful Husband’s absolute favourite place to eat over the whole trip. This little cafe was so quirky and wonderfully inviting, that instead of getting food to take away as originally planned, we decided to sit in and relax, their chairs were so comfortable!

We both ordered a toastie with the hope of having enough room to fit in dessert, but alas, it was not meant to be. We ordered both BBQ jackfruit and cheesy mushroom toasties. Both toasties were scrummy! Can you believe I caught Wonderful Husband stealing my toastie?! I don’t blame him though, they were delicious. 

We also had the yummiest drinks at Chaika (check out their little glass cosies!): hot chocolate with soya milk and a rooibos tea with cinnamon and hazelnut milk (they had a lot of milk options!). If we ever have the opportunity to return to Vilnius then Chaika will be one of the first places we head back to.

Also, many thanks to Chaika for providing my mega cover photo today, displaying their delicious vegan cupcakes 🙂

WonderfulHusbandStealing

Holy Donut

Whilst on our mega walking tour the guide actually stopped outside a donut shop and said ‘Are there any vegans in the group?’ It turned out that 3 out of the 15 people were vegan (20% of the group – not bad!). The tour guide then went on to explain that Holy Donut offer vegan donuts.

It took a while for my mouth to close. 

So of course, Holy Donut was on our check-out list on the day two tour of Vilnius. There were 5 vegan donuts to choose from (quite a selection!) and I chose the chocolate icing and pistachio crumb choice. It was yummy but I couldn’t finish it. Wonderful Husband made it worse because, as soon as he noticed I was struggling, he offered a bet: if I ate five donuts in the next hour, we could rescue another dog – he is so mean 🙂 ! I agreed to the challenge but then he added I wasn’t allowed to throw up which made it pretty much impossible and so I declined. 

I would definitely try this place again on an empty belly. I’ll pretend to be full up and then Wonderful Husband will hopefully offer me the same bet 😉

Gyvas Baras

First off, I love the name of this restaurant, I love that it rhymes. Google translate tells me that it means ‘Lively Bar’ in Lithuanian but I much prefer the original. 

Gyvas Baras was our last stop on our food tour of Vilnius. It’s a totally vegan bar serving food – the perfect end to a perfect day. They have a great menu here and we got the most amazing onion rings to start off with (I love onion rings!). For our mains I had fish (tofu wrapped in seaweed and battered) and chips and Wonderful Husband had a BBQ jackfruit burger. The food was yummy and our expectations were definitely met given that the bar has amazing reviews on Trip Advisor.

Leyla

On the third day in Vilnius, a group of our friends met up at Leyla, a super vegan-friendly Lebanese restaurant in Vilnius. I loved the food here, mostly because I could order one of my favourite meals…  Bread, chips and humus. I love the combination of bread, chips and humus and Leyla served the most delicious humus. I also got stuffed cabbage leaves on the side which were yummy. If you’re a humus lover then you should definitely check out this restaurant!

On an even more impressive note, every Monday Leyla takes part in vegan Mondays!!! This is an amazing initiative taken by this restaurant and I encourage you guys to head there on a Monday (and let me know what it is like please!). Thank you Leyla for encouraging veganism 🙂 

Leyla1

Hesburger

The third day ended quite late so myself, fellow vegan Mega Phil and Wonderful Husband went off in search of late night vegan food. We came across Hesburger, a fast food chain, which offered SOYA MEAT TORTILLA(!) and it tasted surprisingly good. Under the same circumstances I would totally eat at Hesburger again, the vegan alternative to a late night kebab 🙂 

Botanique

We thought we’d eat something healthier for lunch on the day of the wedding as we expected the evening would entail a *cough* lot *cough* of drinking, so we headed for the raw vegan restaurant Botanique. 

To my recollection we hadn’t tried a raw vegan restaurant before so this was something a bit different and we were definitely not disappointed. I had the raw ravioli with ‘melt in the mouth’ cashew cream cheese and Wonderful Husband had raw quesadillas. I thought the quesadillas were great but the ravioli blew my mind! It was one of the most amazing and refreshing meals I’ve ever tried. For dessert we had a raw lime cake and Wonderful Husband had a berry souffle. Both were mega and I would totally recommend heading to Botanique for a light lunch. 

 

We had the most fabulous time checking out different restaurants in Vilnius but I also learnt a great tip: learn the word for ‘milk’ before you go to a foreign country. In Vilnius  it came in very handy when I was scouring the aisles of the local supermarket looking for bread without milk. If you ever travel to Lithuania then the word for milk is pienas. It’s easy to remember because it sounds like penis 😂 

Happy Cow is largely responsible for my mega time in Vilnius so I would highly recommend checking out the website before you go travelling. Enjoy! 💚

47 thoughts on “The Crumby Vegan in Vilnius”

  6. Reply
    Marya The BeauTraveler says:

    I’ve never been to Lithuania, but I’m quite familiar with the country as my first internet friend when I was in elementary school was this boy from Vilnius. I saw the pictures of the city back in the days and mesmerized. Never heard from him again nowadays, but I’d love to go to Lithuania someday.

    It’s great that they’ve also got numerous places that are vegan-friendly. Thank you for sharing! 😀

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Reply
    Natalia says:

    Vilnius is a city which I’d love to visit, especially because of the fact that it’s located in our neighbour country. I love the places you presented in your article. All the meals look really delicious! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  23. Reply
    Patricia G. says:

    These meals seem really tasty! Some people at my work say that vegan food doesn’t really taste good, but I have tried a few, and I beg to differ. I t actually think most of them taste decent. However, I haven’t tried a lot of specialty vegan food, but would like to someday.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Reply
      The Crumby Vegan says:

      Hahah yes there is a weird stigma when it comes to vegan food. People think all vegan food is weird, however we’ve all eaten an apple haha! Lovely that you like to try new things and you have an open mind when it comes to veganism 💚

      Like

  24. Reply
    klolszewski says:

    It sounds like you had a great time! Trey and I definitely need to vacation over there sometime so I can get my hands on those vegan donuts…..

    Truth be told, I plan things entirely around what kind of food I want….

    Liked by 1 person

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