Quick Vegan Guide: Oslo

 While I loved Oslo, I certainly would not say the best thing about Oslo was the food.  In fact, it may have been the worst thing about Oslo. 

First, let me start off my saying this: Food in Oslo is VERY expensive.   Especially for the quality. 

We stayed at a hotel (Comfort Hotel) that offered a free breakfast buffet.  A lot of the options were not vegan, but being a large buffet there were also vegan options including baked beans, lots of fruit, oatmeal (that you make yourself with nothing added), dried fruit, some vegetables, bread, peanut butter, jelly, olives and pickles.   And they did have soy milk. 

In some ways, I certainly liked the Comfort Hotel, but kind of regretted not getting an apartment style hotel with a kitchenette or kitchen instead.   Because as far as vegan food in the grocery store goes you are basically looking at canned goods (like beans), fresh fruits and vegetables, bread, nuts, one of two grocery stores had soy yogurt, the other had hummus but not the one with soy yogurt, soy or oat milk, and at one of the two soy pudding.   Enough to get by on, but not really super exciting.  In fact, I'd say Reykjavik supermarkets were a lot better than Oslo ones, despite Iceland being a much smaller and isolated country than Norway. 

We did eat out at one vegetarian restaurant with many vegans options.  The food was decent, but it cost about $30 dollars a person, so we didn't end up doing that again.  We were keeping a budget on this trip, so we kind of skipped the restaurant thing even though there are a few vegan/vegetarian restaurants in Oslo (by which I really mean a few). 

In Oslo's Central station Flavours Food Market and Olivelundun do have some vegan items.   Actually, the vegan options were pretty tasty at both...oh and did I mention pretty expensive.    Get the theme here, $$$ if you go to Oslo! 

And one other tip.  Don't fly Scandivanian Airlines (who code share with United) if you actually want your vegan meal (or to be treated half decently).  I'm pretty sure they just ignore vegan meal requests.  A rude flight attendant accused me of never ordering a vegan meal.  They even refused to make a tray with only the few vegan items.   This was really only the beginning of the abuse we took by this terrible airline (which perhaps I'll blog about another time).

Have you been to Oslo?  What do you think of the vegan food in Oslo? 


Looking for my other quick vegan guides.  See below:
Budapest
BWI E terminal
Dublin
International Air Travel
Kansas City
Little Rock Airport
Mall of America
Reykjavik (Iceland)