Vegan Zagreb part two: Burgers, sandwiches, raw cakes and self catering

My last post on Zagreb was all about the rather tasty restaurants that are available to herbivores in Zagreb, but there are some cheaper options if you fancy cutting the budget or you're self catering.

Zagreb is also home to the veggie burger bar Green Point, which has a number of vegan options. All the burger patties are vegan and there are soy milk milkshakes (if you specify agave rather than honey as a sweetner) to be had too.

You can get your burger to eat in at one of the counter-type tables, or take away. I was a bit trepidatious about the place due to some so-so reviews on Happy Cow saying the burgers were a bit bland, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I got a hemp burger and a banana soy milkshake. Here's the burger - it's roughly the size of my head:

It was distinctly unbland, thanks to a lot - a lot - of herbs in there. Another plus point - you get to pick the fixings, Subway style, for the burger. Extra pickles for me, please. If you're not hemp minded, there's also tofu and seitan options instead, as well as salads and falafels and the like.

Another cafe we discovered was the slightly more fancy-dan Vis à Vis by Vincek, just at the bottom of the Zagreb funicular. It's a cake and ice cream place, with a nice pavement terrace if you fancy idling a while and having a coffee.

About half the stuff inside is vegan, half omni (the Vincek ice cream parlour around the corner is all dairy, so make sure you dodge that one). The vegan cakes are marked but you'll need to ask the server for which ices are. When we went, there were four vegan choices, and I went for banana on the first visit - just the tonic for the mid-30 degree Zagreb heat.

Of course, given there was vegan cake on offer, we went back to try some out. Mr Flicking the Vs, one of those weird self-professed 'not a pudding person' people, wanted to try one, so they must be pretty tempting.

I got an all-chocolate affair, he went for a choc-and-orange combo:

Did I mention they were both raw? They were both delicious, dense and rich. I'm gutted I only popped in on the last day we were in Zagreb - I would have happily eaten those several times over. 

If you're self-catering in Zagreb, Bio & Bio is a handy beast - a chain of health food shops with lots of veggie and vegan food. While you can soy and rice milk and a few staples in most Zagreb supermarket, but Bio&Bio has way more interesting options. There's several branches across Zagreb, and as well as allowing you to stock up on vegan staples like tofu, sausages, yoghurt, and all the pulses you could want, there's also picnic fodder like biscuits, chocolate and a whole fridge of sandwiches, rolls, desserts and other goodies.

The fridge stuff isn't marked as vegan on the label, but in the branch we went to,  the fridge said all the sandwiches, cakes etc were vegan. I didn't hold back. I tried the grilled tofu sarnie first, kicking back in the Zagreb botanical garden:

The bread was nice, the tofu was chewy, it got the thumbs up from me.

I also packed a few Bio&Bio options on a visit to Plitvice lakes. We stayed at one of the hotels in the Plitvice national park. While it meant we got views like this:

It was something of a vegan desert (that's definitely desert, not dessert). Due to not having a car, we ended up eating in the hotel restaurant - it didn't even have a vegetarian section, let alone a vegan one, but we ended up scaring up a plate of chips and some salad for me, and some pasta with tomato sauce for me. Not exactly my favourite meal of the trip but we didn't starve.

Luckily, I had packed some supplies: fruits, nuts, cereal and raw bars, and some Bio&Bio supplies - a chocolate cake slice and a sort of tofu spanakopita.

The tofu spanakopita was the only Bio&Bio option I didn't enjoy during our trip - it was a bit bland and the texture didn't do it for me. The cake was way more up my street, despite the faintly spongy icing. After marching around Plitvice for a while, it was highly welcome.

(A side note: Plitvice has a few ice cream stands, but I didn't manage to find a single vegan popsicle among them. Even the ones that look like they're just juice had milk and gelatine in. Grim.)

I made another visit to Bio&Bio before our flight to make sure we got some breakfast - in the form of this seitan sarnie and almond and hazelnut rice milk.

This bio kranzl (great word, right?) got a bit bashed about in my bag, but don't let the looks fool you, it was still good. If I could have brought more of Zagreb back to London, I would gladly have. The food was great, the town was great, the weather was fab, and I enjoyed every second.

Green Point
http://www.green-point.hr/
Varšavska ulica 10, 10000 Zagreb
+385 1 4833 667

Vis à Vis by Vincek
http://www.vincek.com.hr/en/Slasticarnice/Tomiceva/
Tomićeva ulica 2, 10000 Zagreb
vincek@vincek.com.hr

Bio&Bio
https://www.biobio.hr/
Jurišićeva 28, 10000 Zagreb
+385 1 4876 269
zg2@biobio.com.hr