Vegan in Paris
Paris, known as the City of Love and gastronome, is also surprisingly vegan friendly. Here, a round-up of some decidedly delicious examples.
Eat your way through the vegan-friendly City of Love
Astolen getaway in Paris might sound like a bad chick lit opening line, but the most romantic city in the world has many sides. After all, Hemingway didn’t come here to walk wistfully along la rive gauche and gaze into a young lover’s eyes. There are many ways to “do” Paris, and one of the most interesting has to be getting on the vegan food trail.
Yes, you read that right, vegan food. Because among the crêpe stands, Baroque architecture and river cruise hawkers is a growing number of incredible vegan restaurants.
Delicious fuel
Our first stop, lunch on the outskirts of Montmartre. There, nestled between white stone houses on the corner of a residential neighbourhood, is Abattoir Vegetal.
Created by Ava Lagatta, this tiny little café is actually an old butcher’s shop. The appropriation of this space by a vegan business was no accident – hence the name – and it has been beautifully reimagined with whitewashed walls, gilt café furniture and hanging plants tumbling from the rafters.
The menu is brief but accessible. My husband opted for a mushroom and quinoa burger, while I went for a bowl that offered three different types of grains, vegan cream cheese, a white bean dip, plenty of salad and my favourite – toasted kale chips. Afterwards we shared a lovely vegan brownie from the cabinet.
With full and happy bellies, we continued our now muchneeded walk through Montmartre, the setting of any number of fabulous films from Moulin Rouge! to Amelie, culiminating in a visit to Cimetière de Montmartre, which offers a colourful who’s who of the Parisian creative elite.
Close to home
Back at our beautifully appointed “prohibition-era-chic” hotel, L’Hotel Collectioneur, after our exhausting walk it was difficult to think about leaving again in search of a meal.
Thankfully it wasn’t necessary, as the hotel cocktail bar serves up a vegan platter for dinner. Consisting of a “world tour” of dips, including vegan tzatziki, guacamole, hummus, vegetable chips and Lebanese bread plus some olives and nuts for good measure, we found this best enjoyed with a Negroni.
Full and tired, sleep came easy and we woke early to a glorious autumn day. Skipping breakfast we set out with a takeaway coffee
to partake of the city’s great sites. After a beautiful moment observing the low morning sun shining directly through the Arc De Triomphe we head to Notre-Dame.
In my opinion, the cathedral is best explored a good distance from the outside, away from the busloads of tourists and hefty queues. Which is what we did while savouring a vegan ice cream from Amorino, a chain of gelato stores around the city that offer between three and eight vegan flavours at any given time. As an extra bonus, they turn the ice cream into a cute little flower, making it almost too pretty to eat. Almost.
We finished our ice creams in the courtyard of the cathedral and then wandered across the road to Shakespeare and Company, a quaint, English-language bookstore on the site of a former 16th-century monastery.
Bohemian browsing and purchasing completed, we decanted to the bookstore’s café for vegan sushi, great coffee and a spot of people watching.
Classic French cuisine
Before we left for Paris I had mused to my husband that it was, in some ways, a shame we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the gaudy French bistros the city is famous for, with their plastic wicker-style furniture and red awnings.
So it was an absolute delight to discover Le Potager du Marais near the Centre Pompidou – a fully veganised French bistro, complete with eccentric waiter. I ordered French onion soup to start, and seitan bourguignon for my main – both of which were delicious. Noah enjoyed a vegetable terrine to start and a vegetable roulade for main. We shared a crème brûlée for dessert and a carafe of house wine.
The next day, our last before collecting our children from their grandparents in London, we’d already decided that our final supper should be a luxurious affair, and so we booked a table at the Gentle Gourmet in Bastille. It turned out to be a gloriously indulgent experience.
We shared “Le Fume” to start, blue-violet potato gnocchi with smoked Nordic cream, and I chose “Le Champêtre” for my main, chestnut crusted seitan, a squash mousse and sautéed wild mushrooms with cognac cream. Dessert was almost too hard to choose, so we shared the vegan brownie with peanut butter cream and enjoyed a selection of little macarons with our coffee.
With a growing number of small businesses supported by Paris Initiative Entreprise (PIE – a local entrepreneurial organisation), a strong vegetarian association and a new organic business network that has just launched, Paris is becoming a real destination for vegan food lovers. Embrace the cliché, the City of Love has so much to offer.