The Organic Traveller
Monday, 10 April 2023

Organic Trondheim: Food and Daily Necessities

A university city and a cultural hotspot in Norway it does not come as a surprise that Trondheim has a number of places to source organic and eco-conscious products. However, although the availability of organic products had been increasing in the years before the covid-19 pandemics, the political will to foster planet-friendly consumation is low. As a consequence it requires a lot of individual effort to plan every-day life in the city if you want to restrict yourself to organic and sustainable food and goods.

Many inhabitants get some of their organic groceries (if omnivore also their meat) from market gardens, community-supported agriculture or farm subscription schemes, but since I do not live here this is beyond the focus of this blog.

Organic groceries and general stores

There are only three all-organic groceries in town, all crammed and pleasant if you like small owner-run shops, with friendly shop assistants who usually have time for a chat, often the owners themselves. All three of them have been here for many years, with ups and downs, sometimes at the edge of bankruptcy. You may expect to find all types of dry and a good selection of canned food, all you need to fill your store cupboard, sweets, natural body care and sustainable cleaning products. If available fresh fruits and vegetables are not pre-packaged in plastics.

Zana

The city's first address for zero-waste shopping is a crammed organic dry food shop, Zana: Bring along your bottles and boxes to refill organic detergents, grains, pasta, herbs and spices, sweets, dried fruit and more. In addition there are shelves crammed with pre-packaged preserved organic food (including vegan alternatives), household chemistry and body care products.

The shop started many years ago under the name Etikken, with a focus on fairly traded organic products, and due to its nice interior design had the air of a signature store. Despite its stylish appearance it was a not-for-profit company partially run by volonteers. In a period of time the shop was run by one of the founders under his name, and continued to be a reliable source of organically certified make-up, skin and hair care, organic wipes, tampons and menstruation cups. In 2023 there was again a change in the economic foundation of the shop, the window front got a new and fresh decoration, advertising it as organic mom-and-pop store.

Helios

For fresh food head for the city's organic pioneer, the Helios convenience store in Prinsens gate. At the end of 2016 the shop closed down but was taken over by new owners immediately and is now as reliable as before. You will find all daily necessities – food, toiletry, detergents etc. – in organic quality, including frozen pizza, ice-cream, unhomogenised fresh milk and Norwegian caramelized brown cheese. The frozen "lefser", Norwegian "pancakes" topped with butter, cinnamon and sugar and folded together, are not organic but nevertheless worth trying – simply defrost and enjoy.

Outside the city centre, a few minutes from the Rotvoll trainstation, you find a small organic farm shop cum general store, the Rotvoll Landhandel. It's part of the antroposophically driven Camphill village and biodynamic farm, an inclusive project of people with and without disabilities. The shop in a small farm house with light and wooden interior does not only sell products produced on the farm (among others tasty organic juices, cookies, bread and textiles), but also offers all you need of organic dry food, sweets and preserves, both of Nordic, European and international origin as well as detergents and body care. There's a freezer with bread and rolls of the village bakery and a fridge with dairy products, occasionally also meat. During the harvest season there may be fresh organic vegetables, too.

Make sure to have sufficient cash with you as the card reader refuses cards issued by foreign banks (at least none of mine were accepted, an issue often experienced in smaller shops in Norway, probably due to a restricted service subscription).

Farmers' market

At Trondhjem torv a farmers' market, Bondens marked is being held every second week on Saturday. Local small scale farmers sell their produce, but it takes a little effort to find the organic ones.

Bakeries

None of the above mentioned organic groceries are what you would call economic success stories, some of them were even about to shut down in the past. Likely the biggest economic success in the Norwegian organic sector is Godt Brød, a bakery which started here in town, as of today with three cafes cum bread shops in town. There's also a artisanal bakery, Isaks, attached to Sellanraa bar using organic ingredients.

Organic food at conventional food retailers

In conventional supermarkets you cannot expect to find all you need in organic quality, usually you will have to shop in different supermarkets and see what you are able to buy. Moreover organic vegetables are often wrapped in plastics, to separate them from conventual produce.

At the beginning of the century the (now) Meny hypermarket Solsiden offered an impressive range of organically certified food seen with Norwegian eyes. However, there has not been any noteworthy increase for the past years, and there's no effort to guide you towards organic products.

In Coop supermarkets watch out for the Änglamark own brand (see also here), in Rema shops for Kolonihagen, but most supermarkets do not stock more than a very basic selection, with the notable exception of Coop Mega shops like the one in the Sirkus shopping mall at the Strindheim bus hub where I found such exotic products as organic aubergines, cream, not homogenised milk and lime.

To avoid green-washed products and misleading marketing while cherry-picking through supermarkets check for the "økologisk" keyword and organic labelling (mainly Debio, KRAV and the European organic label, but you will also find Soil Association and USDA certificates). Dairy products by Røros meieriet, meat products by Grødstad Gris (though no longer certified organic as this decreased their ability to sell their products), ice-cream and beer from Reins Kloster, "Helios" and "Manna" products as well as "Go green" grains and pulses are all safe. Some of them can also be found in Sunkost or Life healthfood shops.

Permanently closed

Before the covid-19 pandemics there were two cosy special shops offering organic body care and wool products, but unfortunately none of them did not survive:

2023-04-10 18:00:01 [Trondheim, organic, fair, vegetarian, vegan, zero_waste, grocery, market, supermarkets] Link

Creative Commons Licence

This work by trish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For commercial use contact the author: E-mail · Mastodon · Vero · Ello.

Sunday, 16 October 2022

Berlin: Organic Kreuzberg

Nowhere in Germany it is easier to adhere to an organic lifestyle than in its capital – provided you aim for appropriately inhabited neighbourhoods all you have to do is to keep your eyes open. Many of those neighbourhoods can be found in the administrative unit of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, and this blog will cover only the tip of the iceberg, i.e. the places I found during a two-days visit. The places covered in the first two sections are all located in Kreuzberg 61, the neighbourhood considered the bourgeouis part of Kreuzberg.

Near Deutsches Technikmuseum

The German Museum of Technology near tube-station Möckernbrücke clearly is a place to spend hours in – but what if you start to feel hungry or the urge for a coffee? For the occasional tourist this wonderful museum seems to be located in the middle of nowhere, but don't dispair! Head East and follow Tempelhofer Ufer back to the tube station, and turn to the right after the second traffic-light. A few steps into Großbeerenstraße you will find an organic gem with roots back in former West-Berlin's green-alternative past. Today it's a friendly though a little worn-out grocery cum eatery dubbed Ökotussi ("eco-Sheila") run by a bunch of practical women. Stop by for a hearty vegetarian (usually vegan) lunch (the vegan lasagna we had was delicious and sufficient for two), a salad or snack or an Italian-style coffee drink.

Around Marheinekeplatz

Follow Zossener Straße from tube-stop Gneisenaustraße in Southern direction, and you'll end up in a neighbourhood that most eco-conscious people will consider the ultimate paradise: three organic (or predominantly organic) whole-sale supermarkets, four organic bakeries, four at minimum partially organic restaurants and eateries, and a number of other shops offering selected organic products, everything within a five minutes walk, all with liberal opening hours compared to the rest of Germany. The eateries of this neighbourhood dubbed Bergmannkiez try to outdo one another in advertising their vegan options – it seems a luxury to point out that vegan even here usually does not imply organic.

Restaurants and eateries

Promenading Bergmannstraße (which makes for the Southern border of Marheinekeplatz) to the West you will find Fratelli La Bionda, a decent Italian pizzeria using organic flour and tomatoes for their pizze. No place for lunch since the restaurant does not open before evening. If you take your seat around the tables on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, opposing a park with a children's playground you will kindly be asked to move inside around half past 9 pm. Since the eateries covered below all close between 8 and 9 pm (or even earlier during the weekend) this place is the only option for your evening out covered in this post.

This nicely restored mall is a Mekka for foodies. Opposite Friesenstraße you will find Piechas Bio-Buffet, a slow-food whole-organic grill. Although vegan and vegetarian dishes are offered, too, their focus is clearly on organic meat, from nose to tail. Arguably Berlin's best beef burgers are served here, and unlike other places they won't cook your meat to death when you forget to order rare. If you want to try Berliner Currywurst (curried sausage) and other German meat dishes at all – so here. Heavily frequented during lunch hours service can be a bit bumpy, and more frequent cleaning of the bar tables would often be nice. You can choose from an impressive range of organic softdrinks, or have beer or very decent cider made from apples organically grown in the wild of Berlin's surroundings. Mayonaise and ketchup for your fries have to be ordered separately.

If you walk around the booth you will find the counter of the organic butcher's shop where you can buy sausages, offal and all the cuts from free-range cattle and pigs kept well at small-scale organic farms in the vicinity and slaughtered respectfully.

Beumer & Lutum Kreuzberg

Bakeries

Lunch and coffee drinks are also being served by organic bakery Beumer & Lutum, a few steps north on Zossener Straße. If you want your coffee on the go make sure to bring your own mug which entitles you to a small discount. While the two organic bakery boothes within the Marheineke mallMehlwurm in the centre of the market hall, and Biobackhaus in the North-Eastern part – are closed on Sundays and open at 8 am, Beumer & Lutum is catering for the early bird Monday through Saturday from 7 am. It also used to keep open on Sundays, but that's past: Due to staff shortness in 2022 the shop is open only on weekday mornings. It offers a small selection of organic food items to complete your breakfast table. The bakery boothes in the mall still have longer opening hours, but do not serve coffee or lunch. Mehlwurm is the first bakery I know of offering an open source bread (with beetroot and walnuts).

For the sweet tooth

Italian-style organic coffee drinks can also be had from the Tanne b ice-cream parlour on the crossing of Zossener and Bergmannstraße. They use organic milk for their all-natural ice-creams served in vegan cones, and offer vegan options, too. Children are served slightly smaller scoops for the price of 80 cents (instead of 1.20 euros for regular servings). In 2019 the ice-cream season has been announced to start 7th March.

Conni Island

Around the corner from Fratelli La Bionda you'll find cosy Cafe Conni Island where you can treat yourself with lovely home-made, partially organic cakes and a coffee drink made with organic milk. The place is run by an artist whom you can hire to paint your walls with art, and since she usually serves herself the opening hours are restricted to afternoons and the second half of the week.

Supermarkets

With a branch of the vegan supermarket chain Veganz on the first floor of Marheineke-Markthalle facing Marheinekeplatz, a branch of Berlin-based organic wholesale chain Bio-Company on Bergmannstraße/Friesenstraße crossing and an Alnatura branch on the East-side of the park, all with liberal opening hours compared to German standards it's hard to find an excuse for not buying organic. The Bio-Company bakery booth even opens for the early bird at 7:30 am.

While both, Alnatura an Bio-Company sell exclusively organically certified items you have to be careful at Veganz: The grocery products and most of the German and Austrian brands on display are organic (and can be found in almost any other organic supermarket), but they also offer a lot of imported vegan products, and a great deal of them are not organic. Unfortunately these are not clearly marked on the shelves, so you should be familiar with organic branding outside the continent. On the plus side this Veganz supermarket introduced self-service dispensers offering more than 80 different dry products waiting to be filled in the containers you brought with you.

Shopping

If you're on a shopping spree or in search for a gift, and the body care sections of the organic supermarkets seem too boring, there's an organic beauty shop dubbed Belladonna in Bergmannstraße. Light and inviting, with a great selection of all kinds of natural creams, body lotions, perfumes, hair care, make-up and much more, both for men and women, this is a must-go for everyone, not just beauty addicts.

Tranquillo

Also need new clothes? One of the three Berlin-based shops of the Dresden-based organic fashion and interior design label Tranquillo is located right in the vicinity.

Around Schlesisches Tor

The Japanese go mad about Trippen shoes, and if you go for fairly and eco-consciously produced leather shoes of unusual design (some of the soles alone can be considered art) the Trippen factory outlet near tube stop Schlesisches Tor is definitely worth a visit. Unlike in their stylish flagship store within Hackesche Höfe you have to browse shoe boxes for your size, and all the pairs are remaining stock or have small defects like miscolourings. In return prices are well below usual market price. You will find children's, women's and men's shoes (even the ones better described as sculptures are astonishingly comfy), and the staff is very helpful.

Kreuzberg 36

One of the many organic groceries turned partially organic eateries and delis is Der Milchladen ("The milk shop") near tube stop Moritzplatz. In the heart of what is dubbed the wild and autonomous migrant Kreuzberg you can have a hearty lunch, sandwiches, coffee and (cheese) cake as well as breakfast, vegan, vegetarian and omnivore.

The place is situated a few steps from the flagship store of one of the oldest eco-conscious Berlin fashion labels, Luzifer in Oranienstraße. All their clothes are made of linen and hemp, and unlike other labels they don't have short-lived collections: If you wore out your favourite dress, shirt or pair of trousers, you will usually be able to buy a replacement. When my favourite dress (of which I had two copies) after ten years continous use had too many holes they happily made a new one of the good parts for a very competitive price. They offer both, a men's and a women's collection, and you will often be served a tisane or a cookie in their light and friendly showroom.

Map of all places listed in this article

Shut down

The following places are closed for good:

2022-10-16 21:00:00 [Berlin, Kreuzberg, organic, vegan, Italian, pizza, coffee, ice-cream, supermarkets, fashion, bodycare, household, shoes, deli, grocery, eatery, zero_waste, bakeries, butcher, burgers, confectioners] Link

Creative Commons Licence

This work by trish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For commercial use contact the author: E-mail · Mastodon · Vero · Ello.

Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Verona: Organic cafes, restaurants and eateries

Meat-lovers, be brave in Verona: All the places I found serving organic food are vegetarian or even vegan.

Piu Gusto Bio

Piu Gusto Bio offers organic breakfast, health food for lunch as well as coffee and cake. They have outdoor seating on the main street, so unless the corona virus forces you to avoid closed rooms it's nicer to sit inside in the pleasantly decorated air-conditioned cafe. For lunch there are tasty sandwiches and daily changing plates with wholefood preparations inspired by the suggestions of the Havard School of Public Health for a healthy eating plate. Around 2pm choice was limited, but the broiled zucchini and fennel, the aubergine-bean mixture and the falafel-style bean balls were very nice and not as bland as health food often uses to be. All food is vegetarian, most of it vegan. While the coffee was nice (well, it's Italy after all), the chocolate cake was dry and crumbly.

More to try

Satisfied there was no need to proceed to the Ziga bar north of the Adige river, in the neighbourhood of Borgo Trento which promises a little more elaborated vegetarian, though only partially organic lunch and dinner, natural wines and organic beer.

For vegan sweets, coffee, a soup or savoury snack I have Dulcamara bakery cum self-service day cafe on my list, but my time between two trains did not allow for more than one lunch and an ice-cream.

For vegan organic pizza and pasta try La Laterna. Their signature dish is bigoli (thick "spaghetti-like" pasta) alla carbonara, and I'm curious how they interpret this rather un-vegan recipe in a vegan style.

Map of all places listed in this article

Probably closed

Some years ago I found the following pizzeria in Borgo Trento on the web, but all references to opening hours have been gone, so I suppose that the place shut down:

2022-08-31 18:00:00 [Verona, organic, biologico, vegan, vegetarian, breakfast, lunch, dinner, restaurant, eatery, cafe, coffee, bakeries] Link

Creative Commons Licence

This work by trish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For commercial use contact the author: E-mail · Mastodon · Vero · Ello.

Monday, 29 August 2022

Verona: Organic ice-cream

My stays in Verona usually fill the time between two legs of a train ride: Sufficient time for a refreshing organic ice-cream in the old town – in the summer 2022 even for lunch – and to shop travel provisions. The most important learning to begin with: 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon turns out to be the wrong time for a gelato.

Come una volta

My first address is the fully organic ice-cream shop Come una volta ("Just like once upon a time"). When closed the shop, located on a street corner in the old town, looks abandoned, and you may start to feel nervous when a minute before the announced opening hour there's still no light to be seen. Be calm: At the exact hour the shop assistant will arrive, unlock the doors and, within a minute, serve your order: Unusual for an ice-cream parlour the containers with the creamy, well-balanced ice-cream are closed and hidden from the visitor's eyes. Unfortunately the shop is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

L'Arte del Gelato

If so proceeded to the second best, yet older one: The partially organic ice-cream parlour L'Arte del Gelato has been serving artisanal ice-cream since 2002 using organic sugar, chocolate, mint extract and fruit. The milk is produced by South-Tyrolean farms but not certified organic. I was really looking forward to taste their ice-cream again in 2021 as it had been a lip-smacking creamy experience some years before. But unfortunately I met barred doors, with a display of tempting ice-cream cakes behind since I came there on a Tuesday. In 2022 it seems however that they are back to pre-corona everyday opening hours, but I did not have sufficient time to step by.

On the aforementioned day-trip to Verona I also tried to find Gelateria Natù in the neighbourhood of Santa Croce, with little success which again had to do with a train to catch too soon. Their website was kept up to date until 2020 but I do not know whether they are still serving natural artisanal ice-cream made from organic milk and nuts. Apart from the milk-based varieties there were some vegan fruit flavours and a number of lactose and glutine free nut and chocolate flavours made with rice drink. Besides they use agave syrup instead of sugar. You may also come here for a coffee, pastry or aperitif but I cannot say whether you have organic options here. Note that this place obeys the typical Italian closing time around noon.

Map of all places listed in this article

2022-08-29 21:30:00 [Verona, organic, biologico, vegan, ice-cream, cafe] Link

Creative Commons Licence

This work by trish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For commercial use contact the author: E-mail · Mastodon · Vero · Ello.

Sunday, 28 August 2022

Verona: Zero Waste

So far I haven't found dedicated organic zero-waste shops which sell most of the food items from self-service dispensers in the Veneto yet. Italians are very fond of nice packaging, and even in dedicated organic supermarkets the cashier will helpfully offer you a (bio-degradable) bag. But the times are changing, and declining it will no longer be met with unbelief.

NaturaSi San Zeno

In fact all NaturaSi supermarkets I visited in 2022 and 2021 (namely the ones in Selvazzano Dentro, Abano Terme and the one in Verona's neighbourhood of San Zeno a little North-West of the Porta Nuova train station) not only offer most fruits and vegetables without packing, but also a small selection of dry food from gravity bins which you weigh into your own (pre-weighted) boxes and jars. In addition the San Zeno shop offers loose-weight household detergents to be bought by the gram.

As of NaturaSi's information the same should also apply to the branches in the neighbourhood of Veronetta and in the suburb of San Massimo (which also sports an organic day cafe).

Map of all places listed in this article

2022-08-28 14:00:00 [Verona, organic, biologico, grocery, supermarkets, cafe, snacks, vegan, vegetarian, zero_waste, household, bodycare] Link

Creative Commons Licence

This work by trish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For commercial use contact the author: E-mail · Mastodon · Vero · Ello.