Vegan travel to the north

Sweden is definitely a vegan paradise! It started already great, with two kinds of oat milk plus rice milk for breakfast in a hotel.

Breakfast corner for lactose and gluten intolerant people.

Here is a short review what we ate in Stockholm! First, I had to survive two days at a conference. Therefore, the first thing I did was to get some supplies at the nearly-vegan shop Goodstore.

After the conference, Manuel arrived. For a start, we went for the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet at Legumes in Södermalm. Nearly everything is vegan and the staff knew exactly what wasn't. It was all very good and we enjoyed it on a hot day outside on the terrace.

Legumes lunch buffet

We continued to the old part of the city, Gamla Stan. Apart from the amazing Science Fiction Bookstore that has also board games and roleplaying games, we plundered the sales counter of Sattva's bakery for some Kanelsnurror and T-bergis. Most things there are vegan, and they are all clearly labeled.

On the next day, which was a sunday, we wanted to visit the café that belongs to Sattva, on Kungsholmen. According to their business card, they were open. In reality, they were closed. We went there on another day, and were not fully convinced. A poor girl was working there alone and had just started her job. She did not know how to make any of the coffees. She tried to make espresso, but it was very... concentrated. But we got a tea for free! I hope they have taught her all that soon after our visit, because it was a bit depressing, and also not a very nice situation for her.

We had an early evening dinner at the all-you-can-eat buffet at Hermitage in Gamla Stan. It was a bit more expensive than the one at Legumes, but also very good.

Food from buffet at Hermitage

On the next evening, we went to Hermans. It was the most expensive buffet we had, but totally worth it. The huge outdoor seating area and the view over the water are just great. In the beginning, we were a bit confused, because we asked someone what was vegan. He had to get a list and then pointed out several things, but not very many. I could not believe this and asked a woman a little bit later, and she knew without the list that most things were vegan, only maybe three things contained cheese or yoghurt, and that was clearly visible. We were very hungry and did not take a picture of the food...

On our last evening in Stockholm, we went to Lao Wai. I had read that you have to book a table or to arrive very early. It was a tuesday, and we arrived when it opened, at 17:30 h. We did get a table, but had to promise to finish until 19:00 h when they would be fully booked. The food was gorgeous!

Gong Bao Su Rou

Ma Yi Shang Shu (I think...)

Nutty delight - chocolate panna cotta

The next day we travelled to Uppsala to visit some friends for a few days. Therefore, we did not go out for eating, but cooked at their place. Chili, BBQ, pancakes... Here is a little sample what you can find in a big enough swedish supermarket (ICA):

Oat milk, strawberry soy yoghurt, oat ice cream, soy cream cheese

Oh lovely Sweden! I totally recommend visiting it, regardless if you are vegan or not!

Stockholm

Sojade & Sojasun and the bacteria problem

No recipe and pictures today, but the results from a "is it really vegan?" inquiry.

In France, you can find the soy yoghurt from Sojasun in basically every supermarket, the ones from Sojade in the organic stores. Soy yoghurt is made in the same way as milk-based yoghurt: Take (soy) milk and add some special bacteria (lactobacillales). They will transform your milk into yoghurt. These bacteria need to feed, and they obviously like milk. The original source of those bacteria will usually always come from colonies that have grown on milk-based culture medium. The question is now if the companies producing soy yoghurt are still cultivating their bacteria on milk-based media (or use other animal ingredients), or if they use plant-based culture media. If they use culture media with non-vegan ingredients, their product is, by definition, also not vegan. They can still claim that their product is vegetable, so this problem is not solved by reading the list of ingredients.

The two lovely vegans at a german blog named Laubfresser posted lately that they tried to get an answer from Sojade (which is also sold in german organic stores) if Sojade is really vegan, e.g. if the bacteria are cultured on a plant-based medium or not. Here is the entry (german). The result was that there was no result. Sojade says that this information is confidential. Which is sad, because we have to consider Sojade non-vegan now. As Sojade is french, I thought that this might be a communication problem and wrote an email to Sojade in french.

Using french did not help. I received the exact same "standard" answer from Sojade as the german one, only in french, explaining what bacteria are, how they make soy yoghurt have a nice texture, and that they were good for your digestion. I answered that email, explaining that this was all very nice, but that I wanted to know about what the bacteria eat, similar to what I explained above. At this stage, I also wrote an email to Sojasun. Now I received an answer, and learned at least one useful thing: Sojade and Sojasun belong together. Sojasun is the brand sold in the supermarket, and Sojade in the organic stores. The information about the culture media, however, remains confidential.

I hope that Sojade/Sojasun will think about this again. Luckily, there are companies that have no problem to declare that they grow their bacteria on vegetable media, for example Alpro Soja/Provamel and Le Sojami.

EDIT (September 2012): Finally, finally! They are declaring now that they cultivate their bacteria on vegetable medium. So Sojasun/Sojade is vegan, hurray! Read on here at the website of Tübingen Vegan.