Vegetarianism as a major movement came late to Austria (even if Vienna once hosted a vegetarian congress in 1886). But today’s cosmopolitan capital has many options to keep vegetarians like me happy and fed.
Enjoy some tips on what to expect on a meat-free trip, with a small glossary of key German words to finish.
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The vegetarian culture
(Bell peppers: notoriously free of meat)
When I arrived in Austria back in 1994, I asked someone where you can buy semi-skimmed milk. They expressed immediate concern for whatever gastrointestinal disease I must have suffered from.
Surely no healthy human would want something as exotic and rare as milk without all the fat?
I give you that story just to illustrate that Vienna and Austria joined modern dietary movements somewhat later than many others.
Times have changed. (Fortunately.)
A survey published in March 2024 by the EU-funded Smart Protein project, for example, found 5% of the Austrian population identified as vegan (the largest number among the countries surveyed), 5% as vegetarian, 5% as pescatarian and a whopping 37% as flexitarian (rather than omnivore).
Back in early 2021, Nestpick rated Vienna as the fourth best city in the world for vegetarians out of the 200 they surveyed. Only London, Berlin and Munich ranked higher.
So being a vegetarian is nothing unusual and the grocery stores and restaurants have adapted accordingly.
As well as the usual arguments, vegetarianism in Austria has benefited (in my amateur opinion) from synergies with the country’s widespread organic food movement. Go into any Vienna supermarket and the astonishing range of organic products available may surprise you.
Restaurants & cafés
The traditional Austrian diet has always been rather meat-heavy.
Perhaps the most iconic Viennese dish is the Schnitzel, often served as a plate-sized piece of fried pork where the non-meat component involves a slice of lemon and (if you’re lucky) a thimbleful of potato salad. I’m exaggerating…but not by much.
As a result, restaurants sticking to truly traditional menus may still seem light on meat-free options.
Such locations often simply rebrand “old school” dishes as vegetarian (like the ubiquitous Greek salad). Käsespätzle makes another good example: a traditional kind of pasta/dumpling dish involving melted cheese and fried onions.
Help is at hand
Fortunately, more and more restaurants now include dedicated vegan and vegetarian dishes that go beyond historical coincidence. As you’d expect, this is particularly true of:
- Places used to serving international guests (cafés and restaurants in tourist areas ought to have sufficient meat-free options, but snack bars are another matter)
- Student haunts. Around the centre, look for places near to the…
- University of Applied Arts Vienna
- Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
- University of Vienna
- TU Wien
- Medical University of Vienna
- Vienna University of Economics and Business
- Outlets whose cuisine lends itself to vegetarianism. We often get takeout from the Akakiko chain, for example, and noodle bars have begun popping up everywhere
And then we have a growing number of dedicated vegetarian or vegan restaurants, with numerous in Vienna’s old town (Google Maps, Trip Advisor, and similar will be happy to recommend some to you).
We don’t eat out much, so I can’t make personal recommendations unfortunately.
Milk?
Most coffee houses, cafés and similar I go into now offer at least one plant-based alternative to milk.
Oat-based milk (German: Hafermilch) seems most popular, followed by soy-based milk (German: Sojamilch). Sometimes the choice is free, but some places may charge a small premium for the plant-based option.
The seasonal markets?
Incidentally, gastronomy stalls at the Christmas and Easter markets now feature vegetarian options in addition to the traditional meat-based wintry fare: spicy lentil soup alongside goulash; leek sauce toppings for your baked potato rather than chopped ham and cheese; falafel as well as fried sausage.
Grocery stores
(Supermarkets now have extensive ranges of products for vegetarians)
The situation looks even better for vegetarian (and vegan) food shopping.
Vienna has plenty of health food shops and organic grocery stores or chains (like Denn’s, for example) that often stock a decent number of options.
In the last couple of years, the big supermarket chains scaled up their specialist vegetarian and vegan options significantly. One such chain (Billa) even has an entirely plant-based store (BILLA PFLANZILLA below Gerngross department store at Mariahilfer Straße 38-48).
Look, in particular, for dedicated vegetarian sections in the refrigerated areas.
Various choices exist, but, for the record, our trolley tends to contain these brands when we’re not cooking with unprocessed food:
- The Vegavita range of meatless products (mostly just their tofu)
- The Veggie own-brand range of vegetarian and vegan products in Spar supermarkets
- Soy drink (as a milk replacement) from Ja Natürlich, an in-house organic brand of Billa Plus and Billa supermarkets. Importantly, they use domestically-grown beans
I believe plant-based milk alternatives cannot by law be packaged as milk products in Austria, so you usually see them described as drinks or similar.
In my experience, vegetarian “sausages” here are a bit hit and miss. And mostly miss. And often unpleasantly expensive: we tend to stick to the other products.
Needless to say, your typical supermarket also has plenty of pulses, cereals (including quinoa, amaranth, etc.), vegetables, fruit, and so on.
Vegan festivals & ice cream
(A popular ice cream chain)
Two notable festivals to consider:
- Veganmania (usually on two dates toward the start and end of summer): one of the city’s biggest street food and open-air market events is entirely vegan
- Vegan planet (normally late autumn): an indoor fair dedicated to an animal-free lifestyle…fashion, food, accessories, etc.
I’m not a big ice cream eater, but have noticed of late that many of Vienna’s ice cream salons offer a surprisingly-large number of vegan ice cream options for your cornet.
We even have a chain of vegan ice cream stores: Veganista (last time I checked their website, they also supplied Spar supermarkets). They have a branch in the very centre at Tuchlauben 12, close to Café Korb, for example, as well as one in the MuseumsQuartier.
And finally…
German vocab for vegetarians
- Vegetarier / Vegetarierin : male/female vegetarian
- Veganer / Veganerin : male/female vegan
- geeignet für Vegetarier / Veganer : suitable für vegetarians/vegans (so vegetarian dishes on menus are often marked with a V symbol)
- Fleisch / Tier : meat / animal
- fleischlos : meat-free
- Soja : soy or soya
- sojafrei : soya-free
- Sojamilch: soy milk
- Hafer: oat
- Hafermilch: oat milk
- Mandel: almond
- Mandelmilch: almond milk
- Pflanzen : plants
- pflanzliches Eiweiß : plant protein
- tierisches Eiweiß : animal protein
- Ei / Eier / Hühnerei : egg / eggs / chicken eggs
- Käse / Milch / Milchprodukte : cheese / milk / dairy products