Please note: This article was first published on The Vegan Tourist and last updated May 3, 2018. Inactive links were removed on November 28, 2021. The restaurant is no longer in business.

I don’t review many non-vegetarian restaurants on this site. I do make an exception whenever I can’t find any veggie restaurants during my travels, like in Fažana, Croatia, or on the Spanish island of Menorca. But as a general rule, I try to promote vegan and vegetarian businesses on this website.

However, I got curious when I heard that Jamie Oliver was opening one of his “Jamie’s Italian” restaurants in Vienna. He’s a likeable guy, and I frequently watch reruns of his cooking shows on the telly, even though he rarely prepares vegan dishes; but I like his no-nonsense approach to cooking, I support his fight against childhood obesity, and his efforts to cut down on food waste. I also love Italian food, so I was all set to go and check out his new restaurant.

Then I read the menu (posted on the restaurant’s website, accessed on May 2, 2018) and changed my mind. For vegans, there’s simply no reason to eat there. There are a few “Quick Nibble” items on the menu, which appear to be vegan – like giant green olives -, but not much else.

There isn’t a single vegan “Antipasti” dish, the restaurant’s “Seasonal Vegetables” – offered as one of their “Famous Planks” –  is served with two kinds of cheeses. I also couldn’t identify a single vegan pasta dish. Most fresh pasta is made with eggs, but even a pasta dish which looks like it might be prepared with dried durum wheat (no-egg) pasta, like the “Penne Arrabbiata” dish, is served with breadcrumbs, which always raises flags for vegans. Breadcrumbs might or might not be vegan, it’s hard to tell without talking to the chef. The restaurant has a pizza menu, but again, there are no vegan choices. The “Secondi Menu” is all about meat and fish, a single vegetarian item – the “Super Green Veggie Burger” – comes with cottage cheese and is served on a brioche bun. (Brioche dough is usually made with eggs). Then there are the salads, all four options contain cheese in addition to other non-vegan ingredients (yoghurt dressing, honey, salmon). On the dessert menu, you’ll find “Sorbet”, but this raises flags for vegans as well, as sorbets might not just contain water, fruit and sugar but also thickening agents, which are often not of vegan origin.

The restaurant does offer to accommodate customers with special dietary needs. “We are happy to help with any dietary requirements and will find a solution in our restaurants for most requests. Please feel free to call us before your visit to discuss or speak to your server when you arrive.” Pardon me, but that’s just not good enough. Call ahead? Find a solution for my request? As a vegan customer, I don’t want to call ahead or ask the restaurant’s staff, if they can prepare a dish for me without cheese, yoghurt, eggs, meat or fish. If there are no vegan dishes on a restaurant’s menu, I don’t want to eat there. If a restaurateur can’t be bothered to put even a few vegan dishes on the menu, I am spending my money elsewhere.

When I think about the menu at “Jamie’s Italian Vienna Downtown,” I can’t help but think that the concept for this restaurant is oh-so-20^th century. Jamie Oliver and his mentor and business partner Gennaro Contaldo both learned their craft in the 20^th century, at a time when no-one had ever heard of climate change. But in the 21^st century, when it is well known that greenhouse gas emissions from livestock are a huge contributor to climate change, everyone needs to adapt and change their habits and behaviour. This includes restaurants, which need to serve smaller portions of meat and fish, use fewer eggs and less cheese and yoghurt, and serve more vegan dishes. I do wonder whether all these famous TV chefs, who learned their craft in the 20^th century when most meals focused on meat and fish, even know how to prepare dishes without animal products.

Again, I do like Jamie Oliver, and I hope that he will eventually make changes to the restaurant’s menu. To quote once again from the restaurant’s website: “Jamie and our team are constantly working on developing the menu and concept with creativity, simplicity and quality at the heart of everything we do – and of course, the desire to give all our customers an experience that reflects our love and passion for the Italian way of life.” The Italian way of life is simple, and there are many Italian vegan recipes to choose from. Let’s hope that Jamie Oliver will update his restaurants’ menus to reflect the problems and challenges of the 21^st century.

Please note: This article was first published on The Vegan Tourist and last updated August 17, 2019. Inactive links were removed on November 28, 2021.

Updated on August 17, 2019:

When Rebecca & Ethan of Traveling with Sunscreen asked me to name my favorite vegetarian food in Austria, there could only be one answer: ice cream! You can read their blog post here: Best Vegetarian Food in the WORLD: The Ultimate Bucket List.

Original blog post:

I publish a vegan restaurant guide about vegetarian restaurants in Vienna, The Vegan Tourist: Vienna, and have seen many restaurants open and close since I published the first edition in 2014. I shared my insights about some of the reasons why restaurants fail in two blog posts, Survival Tips for Small Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants, and How to choose the right location for your vegan or vegetarian restaurant (and a few other tips).

Today, I would like to tell you another story about a vegan business venture, Veganista. I am happy to tell you that this business is thriving.

Veganista is owned by two sisters, Cecilia Havmöller und Susanna Paller, who make vegan ice cream without artificial ingredients. They use many organic and locally sourced ingredients, and soy, oat, rice, and coconut milk to produce their ice cream flavors, which are sold in nine different stores. They started out with one ice cream parlor in 2014, and five years later they own nine ice cream parlors and a vegan restaurant.

Not all flavors are available each day, and not all flavors are available at all nine parlors on the same day. Those Veganista sisters keep their customers guessing, which is true marketing genius. On Veganista’s Facebook page, information is posted about each day’s ice cream flavors at all the different ice cream parlors, and there are 18 different flavors available at each location. If you are in the mood for orange-saffron-olive oil ice cream, or flavors like almond-coconut, blueberry-lavender, peanut butter, basil, lemongrass, matcha, or my personal favorite, the adults-only Döblinger Kirsche (cherries, pieces of vegan brownies and chocolate, and an alcoholic cherry-rum sauce all mixed into one heavenly flavor of ice cream), Veganista is the place for you. There are many more traditional ice cream flavors available, like poppyseed, hazelnut, strawberry-agave, raspberry-lemon, peach, mango, lychee, chocolate, or maracuja, to name but a few.

Veganista sells a special treat, the Inbetweener, which is basically a huge ice cream cookie, and of which different kinds are sold at different parlors: Peach Cobbler, Cookie Cookie Cookie, Coconut Toto, and Nuts About You are popular Inbetweener.

The quality of their ice cream and their inventive ice cream flavors are undoubtedly a major reason for Cecilia’s and Susanna’s success. But many of the small vegetarian restaurants in Vienna, which opened and closed after doing business for just a short period of time, also served good food. Why are the Veganista sisters successful, when others fail?

The Veganista ice cream parlors are tiny, and they don’t have in-door seating, which means the sisters can rent small retail spaces at affordable prices. The Veganista stores open at around 12:00 noon, as few people buy ice cream in the morning. By setting smart opening hours, which change throughout the year, Veganista can keep personnel costs down. The sisters also choose their locations very carefully, often next door to or in the vicinity of other vegetarian businesses. After all, there’s always room for ice cream after lunch or dinner.

In May 2019, Cecilia Havmöller und Susanna Paller opened their first restaurant, The LaLa, where they serve vegan food inspired by one of their favorite cities, Los Angeles. They serve rice and quinoa bowls and salads with avocado, fresh seeds, nuts, and other healthy plant-based ingredients. The location of this restaurant? Right next door to their Veganista flagship store in Vienna’s 7^th district.

Please note: This article was first published on The Vegan Tourist and last updated December 21,2015.

“Vegan Planet” is the “largest vegan fair in Austria,” according to its organizers, the Vegan Society Austria. In 2015, it took place from November 27-29 at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, and was organized in conjunction with the “Yoga Planet” fair, just like last year. In the past, I never managed to attend the “Vegan Planet” fair, so my expectations were high for this year’s event. Sadly, I was thoroughly disappointed.

The food was great! There were numerous vegan vendors, many of which I was already familiar with.

I love Veggie Burgers sold its amazing French Fries, Makam Naturkost made delicious vegan Kebabs, and the Popsicles sold by Freiraum Coffeeshop Deli – which is not a vegetarian café, but offers many vegetarian and vegan dishes – were to-die-for.  Soooo good, best popsicles ever!

In addition to various food and drink vendors, there were many other market stalls at this fair. One could buy nutritional supplements, teas, vegan cosmetics,  T-shirts, yoga pants, yoga mats, stones with – allegedly – healing powers (sorry, I don’t believe in that crap), and various NGOs offered brochures and other information materials about their animal welfare work.

During this three-day event, one could also attend various workshops and learn about the many advantages of a vegan lifestyle (and the practice of yoga). So far, so good.

So why was I disappointed?

I am in desperate need of a pair of winter boots, and a new winter coat. I bought my woolen coat approximately 30 years ago, long before I learned the true meaning of the word vegan. It’s coming apart at the seams, and the sleeves’ cuffs are already frayed. I look like a homeless person in this coat. My last – and currently only – pair of warm vegan winter shoes are a pair of old hiking boots, not really suited for rain and snow, which quickly turns to sludge in the city, and not suited at all for business meetings and other work-related events.

I had hoped that there would be some vendors, who would offer vegan clothing appropriate for winter time. But no, nothing! I could’ve bought a thousand T-shirts, but no shoes, and no coat.

The only vegan boutique in Vienna, Muso Koroni, didn’t even exhibit at this fair. (It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; I went to the Muso Koroni store in early November, and they were all sold out of winter boots in my size; they didn’t plan on reordering any more winter shoes. In early November! How weird is that?).

So this is where we’re at right now in Vienna: lots of great vegan food, but little else in terms of vegan living. If you don’t want to walk around dressed in yoga pants and T-shirts in all weather, you’ll still have trouble finding proper vegan clothing in Vienna. I guess I’ll have to order shoes over the Internet, from Vegetarian Shoes in Brighton, United Kingdom, and I am seriously thinking of designing my own winter coat, buying the fabric, and then hiring a seamstress to sew it for me. How sad is that? I would’ve thought that we had made more progress by now.