Traveling in Italy as a vegan foodie is not as easy as in some other countries in Europe. That is due to many reasons, but the main reason is that Italians take pride in their local food traditions that sadly include lots of animal derived ingredients. Though it might sound discouraging, there is an upside to it: the vegan food in Italy is usually of higher quality and tastes better than in most of Europe.
Turin, or Torino in Italian, is situated in the region of Piedmont (literally “mount’s foot”) in north-west Italy. Piemonte, as the Italians would say, is well known for its hazelnuts, chestnuts, white truffles and Porchini mushrooms. Many of the local dishes include these in addition to other seasonal local ingredients. This beautiful region is widely known for its culinary creations, some of them are even traditionally vegan by chance. To name a few: Farinata – a chickpea pancake roasted in a pizza oven; Castagnaccio – a Chestnut cake (check out our recipe); and some types of Gianduja – a delicious chocolate with hazelnut paste candy, are all examples of traditionally vegan local treats. Hence, it is no surprise to discover that the neighboring town of Bra is the birthplace of the slow-food movement, which encourages consumers to eat more local and seasonal produce to support small businesses and farmers.
Our vegan foodie list of recommendations focuses on small local businesses that offer the best vegan food in Turin according to our own gluttonous opinion. Nevertheless, there are many more vegan and vegan-friendly options in the city, and much more is left to be discovered for the curious traveler.
Tourist tip: check the opening times of each business – it’s Italy!
Bakeries and cafés
Efrem
They are currently relocating
This is the ultimate fully vegan Italian pastry shop, or pasticceria as Italians call it. Here you can indulge yourself with home made Croissants and a variety of fillings to choose from, such as: pistachio paste, chocolate, hazelnut paste or marmalade, accompanied by a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. They offer some classical Italian pastries and seasonal treats such as panettone which could be found just around Christmas time, and also pizza and sandwiches for lunch.
L’Orto Bistrò
Via San Dalmazzo 14/a (Quadrilatero Romano)
This strictly vegan bistro in the center of the city is also a great place to try some home made croissants filled with a legendary Gianduja cream (the local hazelnuts chocolate) or the different cakes offered. Among other hot drinks in the menu, their coffee is organic and fair trade. The place also serves a changing lunch menu. We’ve tried here an epic seitan dish that absolutely blew our mind.
Soul Kitchen
Via Santa Giulia 2 (Vanchiglia)
A completely plant based fine-dine restaurant which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. We haven’t had a chance to try their lunch nor the dinner menu, but we did try their diverse pastry options for breakfast, ranging from cakes, muffins to different Croissants.
Panificio Luciano Aldo
Via dei Mercanti 2 (Quadrilatero Romano)
A small family run bakery in the city center run by a friendly couple that is very knowledgeable about different dietetic needs. The bakery produces many typical Piedmontese sweets, some of which are originally vegan. This is the place to try some local vegan classics like the Farinata (a savory chickpea pancake) and the Castagnaccio, (a Chesnut cake for which you can find our super easy recipe here)
Panetteria Pasticceria Ezzahra
Piazza della Repubblica 16/E (central market)
This family owned pastry shop is a great place to try some Moroccan classics that are traditionally vegan. The cookies are the stars here, as the shop offers exceptional almond, marzipan, nuts and pistachio cookies, all scented with orange or rose blossom flavors. Not everything is vegan here but the owners are knowledgeable about plant based diet.
Torteria Berlicabarbis
Via Catania 10 (Vanchiglia)
Via Po 11 (city center)
Via Cernaia 44 (near Porta Susa train station)
Via Carlo Alberto 26 (city center)
A small local café chain with a cute and friendly décor. This chain always offers a few vegan cakes like pear and chocolate, apples and other seasonal cakes.
On the go: Street Food
Van Ver Burger
They move across Torino, follow their Instagram to find where they are each day.
The coolest food truck in the city happens to be the vegan one. The sweet team of Van Ver Burger offers a few of their artesanal burgers and side dishes. Our absolute favorite one is the Piemuntèis: their own ingenious vegan burger version to the local bloody raw beef Tartar dish.
Focacceria Roberta
Via S. Tommaso 8a (Quadrilatero Romano)
The very best Ligurian-style focaccia pizza (square shaped, thick and soft). This place offers several vegan options: the best rosemary-potatoes we ever had, onions-trio, cherry tomatoes and the mixed seasonal vegetables.
Margherì
Corso Guglielmo Marconi 23 (San Salvario)
Sant’Ottavio 51C (Vanchiglia)
The perfect Rome-style pizza (square shaped, thin and crispy). This place offers a few vegan options: eggplant slices with the most dreamy parsley-garlic marinade, 4 veg-season, crispy and tasty rosemary potatoes and another tomato one that you might as well pass.
Mollica
Piazza Madama Cristina 2 bis (San Salvario)
Mollica serves the famous Italian Panini, sandwiches of homemade focaccia breads with different toppings. You can choose between several typical vegan Italian spreads, grilled and fresh vegetables and vegan cheeses.
Restaurants and Delis
Antonio Chiodi Latini
Via Antonio Giuseppe Bertola 20/B (city center)
A vegan fine dine restaurant serving a local and seasonal menu. Here food is treated as art and the quality is phenomenal. We only had the pleasure to eat here once but it was a memorable experience.
Plin E Tajarin
Goffredo Casalis 59 (Cit Turin)
A beautiful small bistrot, focusing on the local pasta dishes of the area, Plin (small Piedmont dumplings) and Tajarin (hand made spaghetti). The restaurant has a separate vegan menu with a few exquisite Plin and Tajarin dishes in addition to a few starters and desserts. Our favorite dish here are the Tajarin with a savory sauce of chocolate and hazelnuts and the Plin stuffed with chestnuts and hazelnuts.
As this place is tiny in size, you better book a table in advance or just do takeout, which you can eat at the nearby Piazza Benefica, which conveniently happen to be in front of the all-vegan ice cream shop Il Gelato Amico.
Oh crispa!
Belfiore 16bis/D (San Salvario)
A small Chinese restaurant offering Chinese cuisine, made from local ingredients. This place offers just a few vegan dishes of which our favorite ones are the Bao-Zi, steamed bun stuffed with vegetables and the Dan Dan Mian noodle dish in its vegan version (on request) with spicy peanuts sauce and tofu.
L’articiocc gastronomia vegetariana
Palazzo di Città 6 (near the royal palace)
This small NGO-run deli in the center of the city is open only on lunch time. You can choose here from a variety of mostly vegan dishes that are changing every day. They offer roasted vegetables (go for the fennel), gnocchi and other classic Italian dishes.
Il Posticino
Via Ormea 29 bis/d (San Salvario)
A small deli that is almost entirely plant based offering a lunch buffet with a daily selection for seating or take away. Here there is a mix between classic Italian dishes and innovative non-traditional cuisine. We tried a savory Strudel with celeri and lentils that was exquisite in taste and texture.
Pizzium
Via Torquato Tasso 5 (near the royal palace)
Corso Giacomo Matteotti 3 (near Porta Nuova central train station)
Via Bava 2R (Vanchiglia near via Po and piazza Vittorio Veneto)
Via Claudio Luigi Berthollet 16 (San Salvario)
Via Duchessa Jolanda 8 (near Porta Susa train station)
A good Neapolitan style restaurants’ chain about 50 branches across Italy and several in Turin. This is the first chain to offer an almond based cheese-alternative. Although their menu shows only the Margherita as a vegan option in some branches they were willing to change to the mozzarella cheese to the almond vegan alternative for a small extra surcharge.
Assaje
Via Andrea Doria 11 (city center)
A chain specializing in Neapolitan pizza that decided to offer a vegan variety to sausage lovers. The prices are excessive, but so far it is the only place in the city that offers vegan meat-substitutes for properly made Neapolitan pizza.
Ice Cream
Il Gelato Amico
Principi d’Acaja 47 (Cit Turin)
A completely vegan ice cream shop that also offers some home made vegan cakes and drinks. They offer classical flavors like hazelnuts and gianduja, but also some unique flavors such as the super tasty Snoopy 🥜🍫🍪 (roasted peanuts, single origin St. Domingo 72% dark chocolate and self-made caramel and gluten-free corn flour, rice and almond cookies), Café Lavazza and many more.
Aria
Santa Giulia 32/F (Vanchiglia)
In Aria you’ll find the best vegan chocolate ice cream in the city, in our opinion. They also offer delicious fresh seasonal fruit flavors like avocado lime, blackberry or persimmon.
Ottimo!
Corso Guglielmo Marconi 23/A (San Salvario)
Corso Stati Uniti 6/c (Crocetta, near Porta Nuova central train station)
Piazza Francesco Borromini 86/F (Precollina)
A small local chain with some wonderful vegan flavors and seasonal sorbet. The Gianduja is a must here, but also lemon, chocolate and coffee flavors are great.
Vanilla
Palazzo di Città 7B (near the royal palace)
In the most central location in town, next to the royal palace, this small ice cream parlor offers wonderful pistachio and Gianduja flavors as well as a seasonal variety of fruit sorbets.
Markets
Porta Palazzo
Piazza della Repubblica (central market)
Monday to Friday 8:00-13:00 (on Monday the main indoor market is closed)
Saturday 8:00-16:00
Sunday usually closed
This food market is the biggest of it’s kind in Europe. It offers every morning fresh vegetables, fruit and other local and seasonal products. This is a great place to try out many different fresh delights of the highest quality that could be found only in Italy. Italians are known for their tomatoes and herbs but here also the mushrooms and nuts are a source of pride. This market is also the reference point for buying authentic Middle-Eastern, Chinese and other oriental food products.
Farmer markets
On Sundays there are local farmers’ markets in the center of Turin (and outside the center on other days as well). The location varies according to the week of the month. The opening times could be much shorter than what we write here bellow, so a morning visit would be a safer choice if you don’t want to miss out these delights.
- Every 1st Sunday of the month, 9:00-14:00:
Mercato Campagna Amica – Piazza Palazzo di Città
Mercato del Paniere – Piazza C.L.N. - Every 2nd Sunday of the month, 9:00-14:00:
Mercato C.I.A. – Piazza Palazzo di Città
Mercato Campagna Amica – Piazza Cavour - Every 3rd Sunday of the month, 9:00-14:00:
Mercato Campagna Amica – Piazza Vittorio Veneto
Mercato C.I.A. – Piazza Bodoni - Every 4th Sunday of the month, 9:00-14:00:
Mercato Campagna Amica – Piazza Bodoni
During the weekdays and especially on Sundays Turin’s Piazzas host several farmer markets that sell local produce. This is the best place to purchase delicious local hazelnuts as well as other seasonal fruits, wines and fresh breads.
Zero Waste Stores
The term “zero waste store” can be misleading. In stores of this type, the products are sold in bulk, and thus in fact the responsibility for reusing the packaging is transferred to us – the consumers. This is an excellent opportunity to buy high-quality products with the possibility to taste before buying, avoiding the waste of disposable packaging that would otherwise be added to the mountains of garbage that we produce due to our modern lifestyle.
Traditional Italy abounds in zero waste stores, most of which are not at all aware of their trendy feature. This is simply the best and most logical method to sell their fine products so they never had any good reason to change it. We present here a shortlist of our favorite food stores in the city, but please do recommend in the comments if you have discovered other fantastic ones.
Le Delizie del Piemonte
Via San Domenico 40 (Quadrilatero Romano)
This deli offers a variety of fine wines to fill straight from the barrel along with other preserved farmers’ produce of the Piedmont region. The prices here are the cheapest in town without compromising on the exceptional quality of the products. Keep in mind that the famous wine brands that are protected by law (DOP or IGP) must be sold in sealed bottles with their original label, which is why in Italy we recommend to try equally good and occasionally even superior off-brand wines.
Ferraris S.a.s.
Piazza della Repubblica 26 (Behind the southern building of the market)
In this crazy little store for dry goods you’ll find local grains such as the black and red Venere rice varieties from the flooded fields along the Po River (Pianura Padana), dried Porcini mushrooms collected in the alpine forests, chestnut flour collected from the ancient edible forests of the district, hazelnuts and more.
Negozio Leggero chain store
Several branches around the city
A national chain of stores for food and hygiene products sold in bulk. These stores are very interesting to visit if this is the first time you visit this type of store, even if just to see the devices used by the vendors and the various containers.
More to do
We recomend to plan a few relaxing hours for a complete tour of Parco Valentino from south to north and to continue beyond it, across the bridge to and up the hill to the best viewpoint over the city from Chiesa di Santa Maria del Monte dei Cappuccini, and continue down from there along the Po river promenade to grab a night snack in the Vanchiglia quarter.
Parco Valentino
(San Salvario)
This would probably be the highlight of your visit to Turin, Italy’s 1st public park, since its enaguration in the year 1848.
In its southest point you’ll find the magnificent 12 Months Fountain (Fontana dei 12 Mesi), which celebrates the human body.
The most notable part of the Valentino park is the medival castle (Borgo Medievale). These replicas of monumental medival architecture of Piedmont was constructed for the Italian Expo of the year 1884, to showcase the local royal family in front of their snubish guests (even we were not invited).
Just above the castle is the rocky garden (Giardino Roccioso), comprised of streams that originate from natural springs that surround the park, small waterfalls, ponds, gardening compositions of beautiful exotic flowering plants and the artworks of the most talented artist in Turin – Rodolfo Marasciuolo. His most famous work in this park is the “street lamps in love on a bench” (Panchina degli innamorati), however we encourage you to look for all of his sometimes hidded sculptures around the park and in a few more gardens in the city. You can read more about this great artist here (in Italian).
Museum of Fruit Francesco Garnier Valets
Via Pietro Giuria 15 (San Salvario, just in front of Parco Valentino)
This peculiar museum tells the history of the ancient fruits cultivated in Piedmont. Read more about this unusual experience in the blog Paola Everwhere of our friend Paola, which is a museum enthusiast from Turin:
Fruit Museum in Turin: a unique collection of hundreds of fake fruits
Leave a Reply