Over the summer, I did a rail trip through Germany and France, and ended up in Strasbourg. It's a super cool like city - the sort of place you can head out of your hotel, walk around for a whole day and stumble upon all sorts of interesting old streets, tucked away courtyards, great spots to eat and drink, or just to sit down and while away the day people watching.
The weather was good while we were in Strasbourg, and I spent a lot of my time eating picnics by all the canals. Picnics are a great option for coeliacs and/or vegans on holiday - they're always available, they're often cheaper than eating out, you can check out the full list of ingredients yourself, and eating outdoors on a summer evening is a pretty nice thing to do. Bread, fruit, crisps, dips, vegan charcuterie or cheese if it's available, olives or pickles - you can make a good supermarket picnic with not much effort. I love looking around supermarkets abroad, finding all the fun things you don't have at home and wondering how many of them you can shove in your suitcase so you can enjoy holiday food when your holiday is over.
But if you want a proper meal, Strasbourg is happily home to a couple of great options for food that's both vegan and gluten free.
My first honourable mention is for Harmonie Bowl and Juice, a restaurant that describes itself as serving Asian food with a naturopathic approach. It's entirely vegan and entirely gluten-free, which is good news for the coeliacs out there.
The menu is divide into starters, 'harmonie bowls', and traditional dishes. We ate here on a couple of nights, and had spring rolls each time, because finding vegan and gluten-free spring rolls is a rarity pretty much everywhere, let alone France. I'm guessing the pastry was rice based not wheat based, so the spring rolls were more like Vietnamese-style ones rather than the Chinese-style ones you more commonly get in the UK. I prefer the Vietnamese-style spring rolls, so I really enjoyed these.
I really like Vietnamese food in general so when I saw 'crepe au curcuma' - turmeric pancake in English or bánh xèo in Vietnamese - I didn't have to look any further down the menu.
As Mr Flicking the Vs so often does, he chose the least exciting, but most delicious, dish on the menu. On our first night, he chose the vegetable curry, a 'traditional curry with grilled tofu, aubergine, spinach, carrot, onions, with organic brown rice'. You've probably eaten a million and one vegetable curries in your life, so if you see another on the menu, you might just pass it by in favour of, I don't know, the turmeric crepe. That would be a mistake, because this curry was delightful. Rich, creamy, with lots of layers of spice. Delicious.
The next day, we went back and, having tried some of Mr Flicking the Vs' vegetable curry the night before, I ordered a whole bowl to myself. Mr Flicking the Vs had a K-Bowl - brown rice, sweet potato, broccoli, grilled tofu and homemade kimchi in a shallot and Korean pepper sauce. It was really nice. I'd eat it again. But only if the vegetable curry was sold out when I got to the restaurant.
I was pretty full on both nights, so I never ended up ordering dessert, but there were lots of gluten free choices, from cheesecake to brownie to panna cotta and cookies. If I'm passing by Strasbourg again, I'd order myself some vegetable curry to share and then work my way through the whole dessert menu.
My other favourite find in Strasbourg was Eden Libre du Gluten, a bakery which is - you guessed it - entirely free from gluten. It's not a vegan place, but they do a surprisingly amount of vegan stuff. We ended up having a couple of lunches there, with some good sandwiches (hummus and salad one day, red pepper spread with veggies the next). It was perfect picnic food, and the gluten-free bread was really good. There was also a vegan bowl another day, with some salad, chick peas and a good thick creamy sauce - it managed to feel both healthy and satisfying at the same time.
Eden also a couple of really nice patisserie - I tried this vegan wonder, a big slab of chocolate mousse on a biscuit, all wrapped in chocolate and hazelnuts. It's really rich, so find a friend that loves chocolate and be prepared to share. Or just eat it all in one go on your own, that's good too.
We also stopped by a few times for breakfast, and there were a good amount of vegan pastries at Eden. Pretzels (or bretzels as they're known) are a traditional Strasbourgian food, so I was really pleased to see Eden had a choice of two vegan ones so I could enjoy the local delicacy. The salty, alkaline, savoury taste and chew of pretzels was just as good without gluten as with, so very much recommended.
There's also Eden's own take on the chausson de pommes (a French apple turnover), called a doumé pommes. It's just as good as the chausson you know, sweet and full of fruit.
There's also the Edeline - a brioche type roll with chocolate chips, which is just right with a good strong cup of coffee for a pick-me-up breakfast.
If you're planning to go to Eden, go early. It's really popular and if you go later on in the afternoon, a lot of the good stuff (by which I mean the vegan stuff!) will be sold out. It's also worth mentioning that you can also grab a vegan and gluten-free version of Strasbourg's local cake, the kougelhopf - a sort of bundt-like cake which comes in a few different variations. Eden has a couple you can try, and I took the chocolate chip one home. I've been eating it for breakfast, lightly toasted, and it's really good.
If you're in Strasbourg, you might well be spending some time in Colmar, a picture-perfect little town nearby. It's a beautiful place, but it doesn't have any vegan places (or gluten-free ones), so if you're going to Colmar, bring your own food. But do leave a little bit of room in your bag for a few treats and get yourself down to Ganache.
Ganache is a cute little chocolatier with a lot of vegan and gluten-free options to take away. I picked up some pain d'épices (literally spice bread) with a really warm gingerbread taste and a texture somewhere between cake and biscuit.
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