Bodhi

May 27 and 29, 2015

Every June for the past eight years, I've jetted off overseas for the biggest perk of my job, an annual international conference. This year the setting was Munich - full of sunshine, giant beer gardens and beautiful old buildings. The traditional Bavarian diet is not particularly sympathetic to vegetarians (and vegans would really struggle). I ate a lot of creamy mushrooms and cheesy potatoes. Luckily, there are a decent number of vego places in the city and I had a few free meals to explore. My main focus was Bodhi, a well-reviewed place that takes the traditional German pub vibe and vegans everything up.

My first visit was an early dinner (staving off jetlag as best as possible) and I sat outside in the sunshine with a tall wheat beer watching most of the city biking past. 

The menu they gave me was in German, and I puzzled it out as best I could although I'm sure the staff would be happy to translate if you wanted more details (I've just used google translate below). The grilled tempeh in dark plum sauce with millet/hemp dumplings, roasted tomatoes and sauteed zucchini (19.90€ ~ AU$29) sounded interesting, as did the lupin fillet with a mustard crust, red wine shallots, broccoli and mashed potatoes (16.90€ ~ AU$24.70), but I decided to go for the most German-sounding meal on the menu: the crispy soy steak with a dark beer sauce, red cabbage and potato dumpling (14.90€ ~ $21.80). I threw in a side of chilli cheese nuggets (3.90€ ~ $5.70)  just because I could.

Look at that triptych of amazingness! The soy steak was crisped up with a kind of cornflake batter, swimming in a rich beer gravy. The potato dumpling had something impressively cheesy about it, and the red cabbage was soft and tangy. The little cheesy nuggets were completely unnecessary after the giant plate of heavy German food, but they were so great I couldn't stop myself. After 25 hours of travel, a litre of beer and all that food, I barely managed to make it home before falling asleep.

After a full day of meetings on Saturday, I had a spare morning on Sunday to do some more exploring. First stop: Bodhi's weekend brunch.

This time I parked inside, mostly so I could stare longingly at the buffet table. From memory, the brunch price was 18.90€ (AU$27.60), which bought access to an amazing spread of breads, pastries, spreads, salads, desserts and three hot dishes: pancakes, scrambled tofu and a tomato-y potato bake.

The scrambled tofu was probably my highlight, with chunks of smoked tofu dotted throughout the scramble. The pretzel was great, but they're available everywhere, so I probably should have focussed more on the bread and dips or grabbed myself a plate of pancakes. Instead, I found myself fading after my salad plate, even after a decent cup of filter coffee. The place gradually filled up between 10:30 and 11:30 when I moved on, so if you were coming with a group, I'd recommend making a booking. The staff are lovely, happily speaking English to monolinguists like me and making me feel super welcome even as a solo traveller.

I spent the rest of the weak pining for more Bodhi - sadly our conference venue was too far away for me to sneak off at lunchtime and all of our nights were booked up with beer-garden-related shenanigans. It's a wonderful place - definitely worth stopping by if you've got a day or two in Munich.

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There aren't too many blog posts about Bodhi that I could find - Living in Germany is the only one in English, while there are positive (if a bit garbled thanks to Google Translate) reviews on Wie ein frischer Veganer die Welt erlebt, Muc.Veg, Claudi Goes Vegan, Munchen Blogger, Prostmahlzeit and tine taufrisch.

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Bodhi
Ligsalzstrasse 23, Schwanthalerhohe, Munich
+49 89 41142458
menus (in German): starters, salads and pasta, mains (and another), dessert
facebook page

Accessibility: There are a couple of steps up on entry, to a reasonably spacious interior. The toilets are gendered and on the narrow side. There's full table service.

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I did manage to check out a couple of other veggie places during the week: Max Pett is Munich's most famous veggie establishment, a centrally-located, vegan and alcohol-free restaurant with a wide-ranging menu. It was a welcome source of salads and vegetables amidst the regular German food, including this excellent (but badly photographed) palak tofu (15.80€ ~ AU$23).

I also stopped by Tian for lunch - the two course set meal of carrot soup with bulghur and a romaine lettuce salad with hummus, hazelnuts and herbs was fresh and healthy, but not something you'd go out of you way for.

Munich's a lovely city - well worth a detour from the veg*n Mecca of Berlin if you've got a few spare days. Beautiful historic buildings, lovely parks and some jaw-dropping Alpine scenery a short day trip out of town - some non-food highlights are in the slide-show below.

Smaller bites of Berlin

June 11-20, 2012

   

While Germany as a whole doesn't have a particularly veg-friendly reputation, Berlin revealed itself to be just the kind of hip'n'happening city that caters well to veg*ns (though I think it's still got a long way to go for the gluten-averse). Most restaurants tend to include a vegetarian option, though it's likely to feature cheese or cream; Turkish food is abundant and a trusty alternative for vegans. We had very, very few issues interacting in English. 

All that said veg*n restaurants are so dense in the inner city that we barely visited an omni restaurant or discussed our dietary needs directly. Meals are cheap by Aussie standards using Aussie dollars, so we didn't hesitate to eat out thrice daily. We still didn't quite make it to all the kitchens on our wish-list!

To round our Berlin posts out, we'd like to recommend a few more local features that don't quite warrant an entire post each.

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While in Berlin, we stayed at The Circus Hotel. They were well fitted out with friendly staff, prompt cleaning, tour information, free wi-fi, bike rental, ipods, ipads and Berlin-themed movies to borrow and, to Michael's delight, daily viewings of the European championships on a big screen down at the bar. They also run apartments and a hostel close by to suit other needs and budgets.

   

Their breakfast buffet costs extra, but is pretty great. For 8€ (~AU$9.60) you can have your fill of cereal, yoghurt and fruit, a cold savoury spread of bread, cheese, boiled eggs and pickles (and meat), tea, filter coffee, juice and some damn good chocolate milk. They also offer a la carte items like eggs, pastries, pancakes and a vegan breakfast (pictured at back, below). Even so, Kopps down the street is better value still for veg*ns.

   

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Michael found Berlin's coffee to be off-puttingly milky with one exception - Bonanza Coffee. Friendly Melbourne coffee snob Toby insisted Michael check them out and he wasn't disappointed.

   

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The more ubiquitous Berlin beverage is Club-Mate. It's a soft drink, it's a tea, it's a pick-me-up and it's possible to get it topped up with vodka in bars. Apparently it can now be found in Melbourne.

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My thrist-quencher of choice, however, was chocolate milk. The only real rival to the excellent brew at our hotel's breakfast buffet (see above) was the range of hot and cold options at bitterveld. Their chocolate is fair trade, organic and very, very good.

   

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For more general snacking and cooking there's Veganz, an all-vegan supermarket and cafe. Their shelves are stacked with fresh produce, non-perishable groceries, mock meats and dairy, snackables and bake-ables, drinks, ready-made meals and toiletries. Their bread and cakes look great, and I think I even spied vegan croissants!

   

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And next door to Veganz is Avesu - a vegan shoe shop. They've got leather-free Doc Marten imitators, sneakers, stuff for the office and lady-like flats that got my toes tapping and my finger-tips reaching for my credit card.

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Needless to say, we had a blast in Berlin. It's surely Germany's (if not Europe's) veg*n hotspot with plenty else to recommend it too - history, culture, nightlife, cheap beer, cute dogs, ...

Lucky Leek

June 19, 2011

   

We'd had a number of people recommend Lucky Leek to us in very glowing terms, so we were dying to check it out while we were in town. For a while though it seemed as though we were cursed - our initial booking was cancelled because their chef was unwell, we turned up without a booking a couple of nights later to find that the staff had all been sent home to watch the football and then they were closed on Monday night. Our final shot was Tuesday - the night before we left. Our day had been pretty disappointing - Chipps hadn't rocked breakfast, the cafe we headed to for lunch was closed, the place we ate instead was overpriced and had ridiculously bad service, and the contemporary art gallery we went to in the afternoon was pretty patchy (although the Anthony McCall room was fantastic). Anyway, a lot was pinned on Lucky Leek working out for us. As we wandered up Kollwitzstrasse at about 7pm we saw a lot of full tables out the front and began to get worried. But finally, luck was on our side - everyone was just enjoying the sunshine and there were still plenty of tables indoors (although within an hour or so it was basically chockers).

   

There's maybe room for twenty people in there, with a pleasant enough fit-out of cute silhouettes on the walls and a large toy sheep parked by the kitchen (not pictured sadly).

   

The (very friendly) waiter dropped off some bread and an astoundingly good smoked bean dip while we perused the menus. It's not huge: two soups, two starters, three mains and two desserts, but everything sounded so wonderful that we were keen to sample as much as possible. We decided to hit up one starter, a couple of mains and both desserts.

First up, the spiced Balinesian tofu with a chive pancake, chilli cucumbers and tomato salsa (7.9€ ~ AU$9.80).

   

The pancake reminded me a bit of the blinis I enjoyed so much at Fressen in Toronto - it was a bit puffy and quite soft. The real highlight was the tofu though - marinated in a wonderful and slightly spicy concoction, which worked well with the salsa and fresh, crispy salads.

The first of the mains was the daily special: seitan medallions with walnut crackle, rucola potato mash, ratatouille vegetables and cranberry jus (13.9€ ~ AU$17.20).

   

I really liked this. The seitan was nicely textured and not too dry, with plenty of flavour from the walnut crackle and the cranberry jus to make it more interesting than just a chunk of faux-meat. The mash and other veggies were great as well - as with most of our meals in Berlin I had to stop halfway through this to swap with Cindy. It wasn't easy.

Our second main was the gratinated tomato walnut canneloni, with grilled zucchini, bell pepper bechamel, pear and chicory (12.9€ ~ AU$16)

   

This wasn't quite as good as the seitan dish - the canneloni filling was tasty enough but didn't have the depth of flavour that we were hoping for following the previous two dishes. It was still an excellent meal though, with the vegan bechamel a particularly impressive component.

We ordered both of the desserts, starting with the peach and white chocolate mousse, with hazelnut slice and toffee sauce (6.9€ ~ AU$8.50).

   

The mousse was nice and creamy (although maybe not quite up to the high standards set by Kopps), and the various components of this dish were all pretty tasty, although nothing really stood out.

More impressive was the caramelised lime tarte with mango yoghurt ice cream (6.9€ ~ AU$8.50).

   

The mango ice cream was probably the star, combining fruitiness and creaminess in an impressively vegan package. The slice was nice enough but both Cindy and I would have been more excited by something more chocolatey.

We were very glad we finally made it to Lucky Leek before leaving Berlin. It's a nice, slightly high-end vegan place with excellent, friendly service, an interesting menu prepared well and a lovely atmosphere. If we only had one night in town, we'd probably go back to Kopps, but Lucky Leek wouldn't be too far behind.

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Lucky Leek is universally loved - check out: My Veggie Pill (German), Kikkertterroristen (Norwegian), Berlin Is(s)t Organic (German), A Cherry On Top (German), A Finn in Berlin, Tofu Jen, TheKua Does Food, Vegan Mage (Swedish), släng dig veggen! (Swedish), Until We Eat Again, xleiax (Swedish) and Food Worm (German).

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Lucky Leek
Kollwitzstrasse 46, Prenzlauerberg, Berlin
030 66408710
appetisers 7.9€ ~ AU$9.80, mains 12.9€ ~ AU$16, desserts 6.9€ ~ AU$8.50
http://www.lucky-leek.de/

Accessibility: The interior of Lucky Leek is down a small flight of stairs and is relatively crowded (although the table next to us did manage to make it in with a pram). The outside tables have bench seats and can be accessed without the steps. There's full table service.

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The (excellent) Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

   

   

The Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contmporary Art (in an old train station)

   

Part of the Anthony McCall exhibit, Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture

   

Chipps

June 19, 2012

   

While googling around to compile reviews for my Viasko review, I came across this post from Until We Eat Again, naming Chipps his favourite vegan place in all of Berlin. Now I hadn't even heard of Chipps at this point (mostly because it's not on Happy Cow), and we were fast running out of meals before we had to hop a plane for Iceland. Luckily, I discovered that Chipps offered breakfasts, so we cancelled our plans for a 4th visit to Kopps and went wandering to find Chipps instead.

It's a pretty stylish place, with a sleek wavy counter, loads of space inside and lovely looking courtyard area. The breakfast menu is incredibly vegetarian friendly (everything is either vego or can be made vego), but pretty limited for vegans (just one of the 11 brekkies gets a 'VN' on the menu). Maybe they'll veganise some of the other dishes on request, but I was surprised there was no scrambled tofu or similar on the standard menu.

I was pretty excited to try their vegan bacon, so ordered the Lumberjack (french toast, scrambled eggs, 'bacon' and maple syrup, 8€/$9.90).

   

I was pretty disappointed with this - the bacon was just strips of fried tofu with a hint of soy-ish marinade. The eggs and French toast were both fine without being particularly memorable, and the whole meal felt like the kind of thing that Cindy and I could do better at home (just using this bacon would make a big difference!).

Cindy went for something sweet, the Sleepwalker (waffles with blueberries and whipped cream, 6€/$7.40).

   

Again, this was just okay - nicely cooked waffles, a tiny sample of some decent jam and highly aerated cream to go along with them. Nothing extra and nothing fancy, which at 6€ is probably fine, but it wasn't enough to stop me wondering about the waffles at Kopps. Next time.

So Chipps turned out to be a bit of a disappointment - while it was great to discover another place offering veg-friendly breakfasts, what they had on offer fell well short of the bar set by Kopps. It seems like vegans will struggle with their morning meal here, although clearly they come up with some more impressive options in the evenings. One thing in Chipps' favour though: they do have what seems to be the cutest delivery van in the world.

   

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As well as Until We Eat Again's rave review, there are positive write-ups of Chipps from uberlin, Veggie Love, TheKua Does Food, Ein Eichhorn schlemmt sich durch die Hauptstadt – Berlinbetrachtungen (German), Vegan Blog 12 (German) and My Sugar is Raw.

Less positive reviews come from Foodista en ville (French), Berlin on a Platter, The Random Noise, berlin tidbits and foodieinberlin.

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Chipps
Jägerstrasse 35, Mitte, Berlin
030 36444588
Breakfasts 5.5€ - 9.5€ ($6.80 - $11.80)
http://www.chipps.eu/

Accessibility: Chipps has a flat entryway and a combination of regular tables and higher bench seating. Everything is reasonably well spaced and they have full table service.

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The best thing about Chipps is its proximity to Fassbender & Rausch, one of Berlin's fancier chocolate shops, and the closest we came to reliving Homer's 'land of chocolate' daydream.

   

   

Yellow Sunshine

June 18, 2012

   

After a fun few hours at the Computerspiele Museum, we visited the widely recommended Yellow Sunshine. Here on a pleasant day you've a choice of many shaded seats out front, or under a blazing sun indoors.

   

The menu's all vegetarian and organic fast food, with its many vegan options marked clearly and a lot of mock meat. Though it's not entirely written in English, most of it's pretty easy to figure out; we just relied on a little extra kindness from our server when our food was ready, because they tend to yell out your order number for pick-up. (I'd been all poised with my rudimentary counting knowledge, muttering 'ein-und-dreizig, ein-und-dreizig' to myself, too.)

   

There's schnitzel and steak meals on offer, and I saw a lot of people ordering salad, but the two columns of various burgers demanded our attention. Michael's Hot-Double-sChicken-Burger (4.30€ ~ AU$5.30, pictured in front) was an enjoyable tribute to KFC's Zinger. My Fakin' Fish-Burger (4€ ~AU$4.90, pictured behind) was a welcome departure from the thick, chewy, nori-wrapped faux-fish I usually encounter in Australia (e.g. at the Cornish Arms, East Brunswick Club and our own kitchen). Instead the patty was soft inside, seemingly made with subtly seasoned chickpeas and just a smidge of gluten. The dill-spiked sauce enhanced the fishy effect by association.

We didn't have room for chips but the ones we saw at other tables looked abundant and well-made, skins on. For the sugar seekers, we hear the vegan tiramisu's worth a shot too.

Yellow Sunshine measured up to its reputation. If only we had a little more time in Berlin to more comprehensively assess it against veg fast food compatriots Yoyo and Vego.

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Teh interwebs are awash with Yellow Sunshine. It's already been loved by our fellow Melbourne veg*ns at In The Mood For Noodles and easy as vegan pie. Accounts elsewhere are usually positive, see Veganfix (in Swedish), Alan's food blog, Månebarnet (in Danish), Hipsterfood (in German), Wegetariański Żarłok (in Polish), Until We Eat Again!, Vegan Miam, Recetas Veganas (in Spanish), Travelling Wren, flickan & kakorna (in Swedish), TheKua Does Food, Veganmat (in Swedish), GALAPRIL, Rockin' The Stove, Végétalien à Paris, Totally Veg! (in German), The World According to Pia, rainy panda, Nimmersatt in Berlin (in German), Coastlines and Constellations, Artichoke Zine, Catch Us If You Can, Erika and Erika's Excellent Adventure, PICNIC WITH PANIC, Cherry Veg Zombie (in French). Reports are more mixed on Vegelicious (in Polish), Die Katze in die Stadt, מהורהרת בנפשה (in Hebrew) and veganmage (in Swedish), while folks are less impressed still on Dillon Ate That... and The Urban Housewife.

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Yellow Sunshine
Wiener Straße 19, 10999 Berlin
030 69598720
burgers 3.60-4.60€ ~ AU$4.40-5.70
http://www.yellow-sunshine.com/

Accessibility: You can see in the top two photos that Yellow Sunshine has benches on a wide flat pavement, a half-dozen stairs leading to the entrance and spacious tables inside. Ordering, payment and pick-up occur at a low counter.

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At the Computerspiele Museum...

   

   

   

Click to embiggen the disturbing instructions and warning that

accompany PainStation

   

   

Found on the way to Yellow Sunshine...

   

Vöner der Vegetarische Doner

June 17, 2012

   

After our wonderful morning burgers at the flea market, Cindy and I hopped on our hired bikes and headed across town. The main target was Berlin Tempelhof, the airport made famous during the Berlin Airlift, which was decommissioned in 2008. Since then some of the buildings have become occasional venues for festivals, concerts and other events, while the runways and airfield have become Berlin's largest public park. It's really a pretty bizarre place to explore, and on Sundays is filled with people flying kites, riding bikes, having barbecues and generally making good use of it - check out the photos at the end of this post if you're interested.

Our post-Tempelhof plan was to bike home via Friedrichshain, with a stop at one of Berlin's most famous vegetarian joints: Vöner. Vöner is mostly famous because of this:

   

That's right, that's a rotating spit of vegan kebab meat made out of seitan. Thanks to a substantial Turkish community, doner is everywhere in Germany - indeed Berlin claims to have to be the home of doner and after wandering around the city I could well believe it. So some enterprising Berliners decided that they'd give vegans and vegetarians a chance to join the party. Bonkers. Of course we had to order it. For a piddling 3.50€ (~AU$4.30) you get this ridiculous plate:

   

I'm not sure how you're supposed to eat it - Cindy started out trying to use cutlery, while I tried to fold the bread around all the filling and just dive in. Neither of us was that successful. The seitan 'meat' was excellent - far better than the version at YoYo - it was tender and a little moist, had a great spicy flavour to it and was complemented by the tahini and herbed yoghurt sauces (vegans note: you'll need to make sure they exclude the yoghurt sauce). The amount of salad on top of it was a bit crazy, but at least it helps you pretend you're eating something vaguely healthy while scarfing down a ridiculous over-sized kebab. This is a must-do vegetarian Berlin experience.

We decided to continue with the Berlin food theme by ordering a vegan currywurst and chips (4.5€ ~ AU$5.60) as our second dish. Currywurst is another takeaway delight that's particular to Berlin - according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, 800 million currywursts are eaten in Germany each year and Berlin has its own currywurst museum! A few places provide veggie versions of this German classic (try YoYo, Yellow Sunshine and Vego for starters), but Vöner seemed like a good place to give it a shot.

   

To be honest, it's not that exciting - it's basically a veggie sausage slathered in a sweet and mildly spiced sauce that seems to be a pretty simple combo of tomato sauce and curry powder. Still, I'm glad I got to try it. Vöner does a good job of the chips too - they work nicely dunked in the leftover curry sauce.

The menu includes a few other goodies that I'd love to try - four kinds of  burgers, seitan nuggets and a range of cakes and other sweets - everything is incredibly cheap. Beers are a typically ludicrous 2€ (~AU$2.50) and they sell a range of organic soft drinks. The staff were super friendly and spoke great English and the menu helpfully included English translations too.

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Vöner seems to be a must-visit place for vegetarians and vegans in Berlin - we're the third Melbourne blog to review it (after In the Mood for Noodles and easy as (vegan) pie)! Loads of others have also given it the thumbs up, check out: vegan 'miam' (French), Kikertterroristen (Norwegian), Muffin Topped, seitan is my motor, The Vegetarian Diaries (German), Vegan Backpacker, Trying Veganism, No More Sad Geraniums, Food 'n' Fotos, A Daring Adventure for Two, bit(t)e, Berlin Is(s)t Organic, Artichoke Zine, Catch Us If You Can, The Urban Housewife, vegan.in.brighton, All about... (vegan) food, Berlin, Totally Veg (German), Vegan Mage (Swedish), Erika and Erika's Excellent Adventure, Trauerklosschen (German), A Finn in Berlin, Veltenbummler (German), berlijn blog (Dutch), veganblog.it (Italian), Lubeck Vegan (German), Home of the Carrot Hunter, Absolutely Veg (German) and Deutschland is(s)t Vegan (German). Only Taxi Gourmet was a bit disappointed in the Vöner experience.

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Vöner der Vegetarische Doner
Boxhagener Strasse 56, Friedrichshain, Berlin
030 99265423
3.5€ to 5.3€ ($4.30 - $6.60)
https://www.facebook.com/Voener

Accessibility: There are a couple of tables on the street and then a small step into a relatively well spaced indoor area. There are some low tables and a few higher benches. Ordering and payment is at a waist-high counter.

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Some photos from our ride around Berlin Tempelhof Airport