This summer I’m going back to Italy. It’s my 8th or 9th trip there, and this time we’re celebrating my mom’s 60th birthday with family.
Every time I share vlogs from my travels there, people ask me, ‘How do you find so many vegan places?’ or ‘I couldn’t find any vegan options in that city,’ etc. But Italian cuisine, like much of the Mediterranean, is actually very vegan-friendly!
So here are my tips to enjoy your trips across Italy.
1. For traditional restaurants and trattorias: there are dishes that are almost always on the menu and are naturally vegan. For antipasti, bruschetta is a classic way to start a meal. Less known are gnocchetti di pizza fritta, served in several regions, which I love. I’ll share my recipe for that in this guide.
For primi piatti (first courses), these are typically pasta and risotto dishes. You’ll always find pasta with tomato sauce, pasta alla norma, and lots of other vegetable-based sauces like arrabbiata.
The secondi piatti are traditionally meat and fish dishes, so we skip this course. On the pizza menu, you’ll always find the marinara, the simplest and my favorite pizza, with its garlic and oregano sauce, and it’s usually the cheapest too!
2. Knowing how to communicate in Italian will really help! It will be very simple to ask for a dish without cheese, to check if pasta contains eggs, to order a coffee with oat milk, etc. So I encourage you to learn some simple phrases and the names of foods to avoid: cheese, butter, egg, meat, milk, fish—it’ll be reassuring!
3. Find good spots in advance! Wherever I go in the world, I always look up restaurants, cafes, ice cream shops, bars… where I want to go. I have a public map where you can find all my saved addresses on the Mapstr app here: https://go.mapstr.com/patateetcornichon I love using this map once I’m there.
To do my research in advance, I check the Happy Cow website, the Vegan Travel Facebook group, and simply Google Maps. And before adding a place to my Mapstr map, I verify everything myself online: Is it 100% vegan? Or are vegan options always available? Does the place have good reviews? etc.
For Italy, you’d be surprised at how many vegan or vegan-friendly spots there are! Of course, it’s easier in cities: if you’re passing through Milan, Turin, Rome, Florence, Naples, Venice, or even Syracuse, you’ll have the pleasure of dining at vegan restaurants.
4. And for breakfast? I’m always amazed at how many cafes offer vegan croissants! So with a little research, it should be easy. I order a plate of fruit and a caffè latte con latte di avena, and that’s perfect for me.