Vegan Travelling

Russia and other Eastern European countries

I travel a lot to Eastern Europe. Few years ago it was incredibly difficult to find in restaurants vegan meals.

The main enemy of the vegans in this region is a lack of basic awareness. Most will not understand your diet, and even if you try to explain that you don’t eat any meat, after all the efforts you might still get the chicken pirogues. This actually happened to me in my first domestic flight from Moscow to Yekaterinburg.  I ordered a vegetarian dish in advance, and I got one. The problem was that my food was a 100 years old and a totally rotten. When I turned to the steward and told her that my meal had spoiled she ignored me. When I explained to her, that she had to find the solution, she finally offered her lunch box with the chicken pirogues…

When ordering the salad in the restaurant – be careful. It might be helpful to prepare an exact list of what you don’t eat! Explain to the waiter, that the meat dish is not just a dish with meat pieces but also the meat based soup. Don’t forget to mention, that you don’t eat mayonnaise: you will find it everywhere, in all kinds of salads, potato dishes etc.

Actually, if you try to explain your vegan diet and try to get something to eat this way, the chances not to starve are close to zero. However, there are few solutions!

In the last few years something good has happened that gives us  hope! In the big cities, you will find a lot of Asian cuisine restaurants and Sushi bars. Most of them will have a vegetarian menu.

When I am in Moscow  meeting with my friends, I usually  go to Pekinskaya Utka (Pekin duck) chain:

http://www.ytka.ru/

In their branches, there is a salad bar. You can fill up the plate with all kinds of fresh and pickled vegetables and even soy milk skin (sparja). The salad bar could include:

white wood mushrooms and black mushroom salad, laminaria salad, cucumber and garlic salad, Sichuan style cabbage, assorted soy sticks and mushrooms, celery salad, colored soy shoot salad, Chinese carrot salad, lily shoot salad, soy noodles  and etc.

However, you have to be careful…It has happened to me that I didn’t notice the difference between strips of pig’s ear, squid and radish…

This is a cheap and “friends’ friendly” solution because they will have  lots of choices what to have while you’ve arranged for yourself the safe dish (almost).

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