This summer was my first proper trip as a vegan with coeliac disease (and my who-knows-what-number trip as just your average vegan). Me and Mr Flicking the Vs decided to head to Germany and France so see how we'd fare. The German capital Berlin often makes the top 10 of world's most vegan friendly cities, so I had high hopes for vegan food while I was away, although finding vegan food that's also coeliac-compatible might be a bit more of a challenge.
For my coeliac friends, I heartily recommend checking out Isabella Gluten-Free Pâtisserie. It's 100 percent gluten-free (as you'd hope from the name!), and I reckon about one-third of the menu is vegan to boot. If you've avoiding gluten, it's got a great selection of breads, pastries, biscuits, cakes and tarts that are just as drool-worthy as their gluten-containing counterpart.
The chance to sit down for a big gluten-free, vegan breakfast was clearly too big of an opportunity to pass up, so I got happily stuck into the Isabella's vegan morning, the biggest, most vegan, most gluten-free thing I could find. Alongside your breakfast plate, there's a fresh bread basket, with three different types of bread - a soft white sandwich bread, a seeded roll, and a darker, wholemeal type slice. All that would be exciting enough for me, but the plate that goes with it is a simple joy too - some fruit, some roasted vegetables, vegan butter and jam, and three really good spreads. There's a very slightly spicy peanut butter with a hint of chilli, some beetroot hummus, and a spread that's a dupe for good herby cream cheese. I was in Cologne for three days, and I ate the vegan morning twice. My only regret was not making it three in a row.
You'd think that would be a big enough breakfast for most people, but I was not most people that day. When I walked in, I was greeted with this beautiful sight - an entire cabinet of mostly vegan tarts and cakes. I couldn't say no.
So I said yes instead, a very hearty yes to this strawberry tart. When I was a kid, we'd go on holiday to France and I'd see cakes like this in bakers' windows and think they were the fanciest cake I could imagine eating. I feel pretty fancy eating them now - crisp pastry, soft cream, picture perfect fruit. Highly recommended.
In between sitting down for breakfast and tarts, I popped into Isabella for some takeaway goodies too. I really enjoyed their macarons (about half of the range are vegan) which were delightfully crisp on the outside and gooey on the inside.
We took a few baked goods to a nearby park for an al fresco breakfast. Given how highly I rated the breads, the breakfast, the macarons and tarts, I was expecting great things from the baked goods. Alas, they didn't quite hit the same high notes as everything else - they were just pleasant rather than outstanding. My experience of gluten free baked goods is that they often taste great, but the texture can be a bit on the dense side, and these were exactly that. I loved the sweet blueberry muffins, but the ground almonds that help to give the bake structure also gave it a little bit of a grainy texture. I'd happily eat them again, I'd just reach for the other Isabella's goodies first.
Udum is an all-vegan Vietnamese place, with good reviews on the Find Me Gluten Free app (my new best friend, post coeliac diagnosis) and all allergens clearly marked on the menu.
Before I even got to consider food, I was delighted to see there was vegan Vietnamese coffee on the menu. I love Vietnamese coffee - condensed milk and sharp black coffee manages to be both a sharp slap to the face of a pick-me-up and a sweet comforting fluffy blanket of a drink in the same glass.
We got a couple of sides to go with our mains - the rather fetching Pinkladies (a rather cute name for a rather pink combo of tofu, mango, cucumber, pepper and herbs wrapped in brightly-coloured rice noodles with a limi chilli sauce), as well as the summer rolls with tofu and vegetables, with a peanut hoisin sauce. These sort of dishes are made for the summer heat - crisp, refreshing, with spiky sauces.
Mr Flicking the Vs and I both ended up picking bowls for dinner. I picked the UdumbaraBowl, of quinoa, chickpeas, tempeh, wakame, tomato and cucumber, with lots of what the menu called "cocktail sauce" but which I think might have been sriracha mayonnaise. The tempeh was my favourite element of the dish - I'm not sure how they cooked it, but it was in another galaxy of tastiness compared to my humble tempeh making efforts at home. I'd love to know Udum's tempeh secrets. The rest of the UdumbaraBowl was fine, but not massively exciting - just veggies and quinoa with the mayo-dressing doing the heavy lifting for flavour. I would have loved some herbs or a sharper dressing to lift it a little.
Mr Flicking the Vs' BuddhaBowl was much more fun - tofu, rice noodles, salad, fried onions, herbs and tomatoes, with a lime chilli sauce. If I were going back, I'd be ordering the BuddhaBowl. Alas, I won't - I had symptoms of having eaten gluten the next day, so I guess there was some cross contamination somewhere in the kitchen. It's always a risk in places that serve both gluten-containing and gluten-free food, so lesson learned there.
One thing I did find in Germany was that friteries are often a good bet when you're looking for food that's both vegan and gluten-free - and who doesn't love fried potatoes?
The fries from Frites Belgique are gluten free and they have a lot of clearly marked options for sauces. I went for the rather basic but very tasty curry ketchup and definitely enjoyed the skyscraper box everything came in!
Before I was diagnosed with coeliac, what I really wanted from a restaurant was that it was vegan, or as close to it as possible. Now, post-diagnosis, I try to eat out at restaurants that are entirely gluten-free or as close to it as possible, because that's what safest. Unfortunately, that means these days I'm eating in more restaurants that serve primarily non-vegan food than I ever have in the past. So, whenever I find a place that's both vegan and gluten-free, I make a real effort to visit.
Cafe Bauchgefühl is both gluten-free and vegan (hooray!), and it's a bit outside of the city centre, so hop on the metro or be prepared for a bit of a walk to get there.
It's a really nice little space, bright and open out to the pavement on sunny days. The menu is short and interesting - porridge with different toppings, savoury and sweet waffles (and even a waffle burger, where the bun is swapped with waffles), and a few other savoury choices like toasties and quiche. I had set my heart on waffles, but it was another 30C+ day, so I decided that quiche and salad sounded much more appealing.
Mr Flicking the Vs went for a kimcheeze toastie. Kimchi and cheese are a match made in heaven to me, and together on gluten-free buckwheat bread, they made a very tasty toastie. The pastry was savoury, heavy on the almonds. The roast veggies and creamy sauce was more a topping than a filling, and there wasn't quite enough of it to call it a quiche - tart would have been a better description.
What I really loved at Cafe Bauchgefühl was the iced coffee - a proper mess (I mean that in the most complimentary way) of coffee, cream and ice cream. I think it lasted all of five seconds. It was somewhere between an ice cream, a dessert and a cold drink, and somehow both refreshing and indulgent. Delicious.
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