Bars Bars Galore!

Before my flight to Berlin, I loaded up on bars. It’s increasingly hard to order vegan food on planes and additionally it’s nice to have a store of bars for a couple of days in a new city while you get your bearings.

Because it’s fun to rank things, here are some impressions. It’s a pretty narrow band of results because, well, they’re all pretty good.

Larabar – Cherry Pie

8/10 This one is as tangy as can be. One of my very favorites.

Larabar – Lemon Bar

7.5/10 Also tangy, also delicious.

Larabar – Cashew Cookie

7.5/10 A lot better than it should be.

Larabar – Blueberry Muffin

6/10 It’s good just not as special as the other Laras.

Larabar – Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

7.5/10 You just can’t go wrong with these ingredients.

Trader Joe’s ABC

6/10 Almond butter and cocoa are great. But these get mashed easily and they’re a little more one note than the others.

Trader Joe’s Coconut Chocolate Date Bar

7/10 A solid choice. Not the best but pretty good.

Barebells – Salty Peanut

7/10 This is basically a vegan Snickers! But the powder in it is a little cloying to me.

Barebells – Hazelnut Nougat

5/10 This should be good but it’s cloying as well. I think I don’t love protein powder.

Go Macro – Heartwarming Retreat

9/10 This is indeed heartwarmingly delicious. Like a vegan Tiger’s Milk Bar.

Plus one more I found in Warsaw

Rawbite – Apple Cinnamon

6/10 Yeah, it’s fine.

Yeti Eats: Vegano Colombia

“If you’re going to latin america, it’s really hard as a vegan,” they say. “You pretty much have to eat rice, beans and plantains every day.”

My reply: “Sign me up!”

And I could pretty happily eat a vegan version of Bandeja Paisa every day. Every meal! Beans and rice and plantains and avocado is pretty much the best.

Now it is true that many meals in Colombia have the bizarre distinction of being super oily while simultaneously super bland.  When you use cheese as your main spice, food often lacks a lot of zest and flavor.

But actually the vegan offerings in Colombia were surprisingly great! According to Happycow, there are 10 fully vegan restaurants in Medellin and 29 in Bogota. There are approximately 7 million people in Bogota, so to put that in perspective here ( again according to Happy Cow) the amount of fully vegan restaurants similar sized cities have.

Bogota: 29                                                           Madrid: 43

Miami: 24                                                           Hong Kong: 30

Yangon: 2                                                            Taipei: 62

Kuala Lumpur: 13                                             Dallas, USA: 16

Two take-aways there. First of all, I really need to get to Taipei. But secondly you can see that Bogota compares favorably with other similar sized cities. I was there during some political unrest and only visited one place. But it was a super good place, especially the tamales.

Even in small towns, there is always amazing fruit to be had, obviously. Even new fruits that I had never seen, like maracuyá and uchuva and pitaya and borojó  Likewise, cheap juices are everywhere, and you can always choose water or milk as a base. My favorite juice was probably guarapo, fresh sugarcane with lots of lime. My second favorite though was coconut lemonade, which is maybe more awesome than it sounds.

Maybe you don’t want to live on fruit alone. No problem. Empanadas are super cheap and tasty and several places offer vegan versions of them. And Colombia has some of the best veggie burgers I’ve ever had.

Most meals I had were fairly cheap, I never had to walk super far to find them, and almost all included Champignon mushrooms. Most importantly, most people (even in small towns) knew what the term vegano meant even if they didn’t have options for it.

But without much effort it’s quite easy to find awesome food. Dried and sugary coconut, quinoa bowls, roasted cauliflower, falafel, and of course arepas are all part of the awesome vegan scene there.

I would say that a vegan planning on traveling to Colombia would probably be best served bring salt, yeast and hot sauce as most of the meals would benefit from all three of those.