Vegetarian Living in Austria

Happy Friday! I am SO happy it’s the weekend. I’ve been feeling so crazy busy and tired since getting back from my trip and am really looking forward to relaxing and resting up a bit over the next few days.

Today’s post is about my eats while in Austria. Let me start by saying that one of the reasons I love California is because it’s so easy to be a vegetarian here. Both areas I’ve lived in in this state, San Diego and now the Bay Area, are wonderful for a girl like me who is into healthy, meat-free living and real food. I can go down the street to a farm and pick up some fruit & veggies, and mostly every restaurant has at least one thing that’s vegetarian.

I anticipated the cuisine of Germany & Austria to be dominated by meat, but what I found there was that nearly every item on every menu centered around meat. Sometimes it took several tries to find a restaurant with a meal option I could eat, let alone one that was decently healthy. I ate quite a bit of cheese while in Austria! Here’s a look at my eats there:

multigrain seeded bread with brie cheese, cucumber and lettuce

arugula salad with mozzarella sticks

tomato soup

baked potato stuffed with veggies & some sort of sour cream sauce 

cheese croquettes with cranberry sauce 

various veggie salads like this one

caprese salad

The last night we were in Austria, Adam and I found a cute Italian restaurant next to the St. Johann church. Adam had a calzone that was the size of my head, and I had spaghetti aglio e olio – a pasta dish with garlic, olive oil, red pepper flakes, and parmesan cheese:

Before this trip, I already knew that European breakfast is just not for me. Don’t get me wrong, I adore sweets, but not at 8 AM! The first morning we were there, we ate at a cafe. I had a yogurt fruit parfait – aka the most bitter plain yogurt ever with fake strawberry sauce and chocolate granola. Two bites into my apple cinnamon croissant, I was thinking that we needed to do breakfast differently the next day. I really enjoy starting my day off with a healthy meal!

We wound up picking up some fruit, bread, peanut butter, and jelly at a nearby food store, and eating that for breakfast the other mornings. An apple + some PB & J on whole wheat bread felt much better as my morning meal.

I obviously didn’t forget about sweets all together though! One day a bakery in town caught my eye:

I nabbed a rich chocolate cake slice and big chocolate dipped cookie filled with jam. These desserts were my favorite part of Austrian cuisine!

Even though my options were sort of limited when it came to food in Austria, I felt like I did pretty good with eating my own healthy breakfast, a light lunch, fruit or protein bars I brought as snacks, and then a heavier (cheese-filled) meal for dinner. One perk was the local white wine that was available everywhere we went. I certainly had my share of riesling in Austria! 🙂

Hope that you have a great weekend!