Got a trip to Italy coming up and worried that you’ll starve to death as a vegan?

Don’t worry. I got chu.

Italy has got you as well.

Six months before we left, I was googling every possible thing to know about being vegan in Italy because I was worried that I’d either eat something that wasn’t vegan or have to live off of lettuce and tomatoes. I even packed oats into my luggage. No, seriously.

I really thought that (despite having an Italian dad) that Italians lived off of cheese and cured meats.

Upon arrival, I quickly learnt that being vegan in Italy is almost as easy as breathing. And that’s even with my terribly spoken Italian.

Most of the younger generation can speak English (I would estimate that most people under 50 have a pretty good grasp on it) and if you find yourself in a situation where English just isn’t a thing, all you need to learn in a handful of Italian words and you’ll never have to worry about accidentally eating anything you wouldn’t want to.

Keep reading if you want to find out how to be vegan in Italy.

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Vegan activism stickers can be seen all over Italy. This one was spotted in Firenze.

Sono Vegana

Let’s start with the basics. If worst comes to worst, there is always fruit and veg around.

Once you start noticing the fruit and vegetable stalls, it seems that more and more appear.

We found that generally, the produce was ok, nothing to write home about. But when you find the really fresh stuff, it’s like you’re tasting fruit for the first time. Be careful though – many times we bought things in punnets, only to open it at home and find out the vendor had stuffed the middle full of rotten fruit.

And if that fails, there’s alway produce in the supermarkets. I had heard that Italy has a problem with reusable bags due to hygiene concerns but we found that since you bag your own stuff in most supermarkets there anyway, the cashiers didn’t care.

Lots of fresh produce comes wrapped in unnecessary plastic but there is always the option to buy loose as well so it’s relatively easy to avoid excess rubbish.

The prices though, they’re another story.

Most fresh fruit and vegetables there are insanely priced. To an Australian anyway. Depending on what country you’re from and the exchange rate you get, you could be in for a surprise. We found that it was much cheaper to buy frozen vegetables when cooking for ourselves and the frozen stuff there actually tastes pretty good!

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A fresh produce stall in Venezia.

Keep it Fresh

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Fresh fruit being sold in Sorrento.

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You can find fruit almost anywhere; even when you’re taking a stroll through a park.

You Wanna Pizza Me?

Let’s move onto one of the two things everyone thinks of when they think of Italian cuisine.

Pizza.

Pizza dough is pretty much vegan everywhere in Italy. We a lot of pizza and not one place had non-vegan dough.

Actually, pizza marinara is one of two main pizzas in Italy. Pizza with a tomato sauce and nothing else.

The other is pizza margherita. Pizza with tomato sauce and cheese.

At one place in Venice, we did just that and the waiter said in these exact words, “I just can’t give you a pizza without cheese. It will be a horrible experience.”

We got the pizza without the cheese in the end after about five minutes of trying to convince the waiter but maybe we should have listened and gotten something else because it turned out to be pretty mediocre.

It’s pretty easy to find vegan pizza anywhere in Italy. Just order a vegetable pizza and omit the cheese. Some places will have vegan cheese but we never ate at any places that offered it.

Everywhere else though, pizza without cheese was great.

We found that the cheaper the pizza, the better it tasted.

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Surprisingly, the best pizza we had was the cheapest one which ironically, we found in Positano. This pizza was 5 Euros.

Time for a little lesson in Italian.

You definitely don’t need to be fluent in Italian to survive as a vegan there. Even when eating out or buying your own groceries.

All you you need is a few simple phrases and words for those awkward situations where flailing your arms around isn’t giving you the desired results and the google translate app.

The google translate app is a Godsend when it comes to buying foods with ingredient lists.

Simple open the app, set the language to translate from Italian and snap a pic of the ingredients.

I found that ingredient lists on processed foods were a lot simpler than the ones we have in Australia. They were made up mostly of words (read: foods) and very little, if any, numbers. That alone made finding food a thousand times easier even than reading English ingredients in Australia.

If you for some reason can’t get the google translate app or don’t want to, memorising a few words will make eating out and buying food a breeze.

Vegan: vegano

I’m vegan: Sono vegana

Without: senza

Milk: latte

Egg: uovo

Example: if you want something without milk, just say, “senza latte”.

Cheese: formaggio

Almond: mandorla

Soy: soia

Tip: don’t discount something straight away if you see latte on the ingredients. It may be made with a plant based milk, such as almond milk, or soy.

Lard: strutto

Tip: if you see “100% vegetale” on something it means it’s made from 100% plants. The equivalent of plant based.

Butter: burro

Broth: brodo

Meat: carne

Fish: pesce

Seafood: frutti di mare

Dairy: latticini

Chicken: pollo

Tip: peperoncino actually means chilli in Italian. I missed out trying a lot of food because I thought it meant pepperoni. Pepperoni is obviously just pepperoni in Italian.

Same for peperone which is actually capsicum (or bell pepper).

If you love bread, you’ll never starve in Italy.

If you love focaccia, well, then you’ll be in heaven.

I never really cared for focaccia until I stepped inside a little bakery on one of the main streets in Milan run by a middle aged woman.

I didn’t think there’s be anything there for us to eat, I just wanted to see inside an Italian bread shop.

I didn’t even get a chance to practice my Italian there. After hearing my dad say I will have a hard time trying to eat in Italy, she rushed over and started pointing out all of the vegan options behind the glass counter and explained the ingredients in the dough. It was just flour, yeast, sugar and olive oil.

I don’t know about your country, but in Australia, focaccia isn’t something people rush out to buy. It’s pretty basic, and in my experience, boring. Sometimes you’ll get olives. Sometimes some sun-dried tomatoes. If you’re lucky, you might get both. It’s pretty basic in the land down under unless you go to a specialist bakery.

I think we ate focaccia every day for the week we were in Italy. The flavour was on another level and the toppings there were much more varied. Sure there’s the usual, sun-dried tomatoes and olives. But then there’s also, roasted squash, zucchini, onion, caramelised lemon slices, roasted capsicum, basil pesto, chilli flakes…

If you can’t find anything to eat, there will almost always be some focaccia around.

Get a Loaf of This

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Focaccia from the little Milano shop below.

Something I wasn’t expecting in Italy was the sheer amount of vegan pastries.

You’re really not strapped for options when it comes to, delicate, sweet, flaky passticino.

Something that amazed me even more?

The vegan croissants.

I hadn’t had a croissant for 3 years. It’s just too hard to find them where I live. But Italy? Italy has vegan croissants coming out of its ears.

And you can find them in places you think you’ll never find vegan food, like train stations, vending machines, tobacco shops, in the airport, tiny convenience stores, at concession stand in the middle of the Pompeii ruins…

But if you want the really good stuff, find one of the vegan bakeries dotted around the country. The stuffer is fresher, there’s more choice and surprisingly, the pastries are usually a lot cheaper.