Raw in Vienna

At the last minute, I decided to leave my juicer in Berlin. Not quite enough room in my suitcase, and I figured that juice bars were so plentiful in Berlin, they probably would be similarly common in Vienna, right? Yeah, no such luck. I haven’t found any actual juice bars, nor many vegetarian restaurants with juicers. But I am so so glad that I brought my immersion blender, and have been making green smoothies.

One of the last days in Berlin, I came across a brown wrinkly fruit in the bio store called Maracuja. I had tasted it before in a commercially prepared mango-maracuja smoothie, but didn’t know what it was in English, and didn’t know what it looked like. I bought a few, brought them home and cut them open. They’re filled with edible seeds embedded in a delicious tart slimy goo. I bought some at the giant bio supermarket, Basic (at the Meidlinger Hauptstrasse UBahn station), and the sign there also called them Passifruchte. Aha! This is passionfruit! All these years, I had never known what they looked like. I could have looked it up before, I guess, but kind of liked the idea of some exotic euro-fruit that no one in the US knows about. I did just look it up on wikipedia, which says that there are two types of passion fruit, a smooth yellow grapefruit-looking one, and a wrinkled purple-brown one. The purple-brown one (that I’ve been buying) allegedly has traces of cyanide in it. Hmmm. Apparently it’s only in the skin (which is too tough to eat). Well, I’ve had about 6 in the last week and am just fine.

Aside from the Basic supermarket, I went to a cute vegan / veggie restaurant called BioBar von Antun, on Drahtgasse 3 (next to Judenplatz). I had a lovely greek salad, and a orange/beet/carrot juice. It was way sweet, but tasty. Also, the first time that I’ve ever liked beets in anything.

Off to ride a giant ferris wheel,

One love,
Marissa