Vegetarian & Vegan in Sofia, Bulgaria

In this vegetarian and vegan guide to Sofia, we share where to find the best vegan Bulgarian food in Sofia. We munched on banitsa, filled our bellies with mish-mash and bob chorba, and explored local markets.

Bulgaria’s capital city isn’t known for being a great vegan travel destination, but perhaps it should be. If you kept up with our vegan travel adventures this Veganuary in 2016, you’ll know that we loved our vegan adventure in Sofia. This year we were back in Bulgaria’s capital eating both vegetarian and vegan food, and have even more to share in our updated guide.

From breakfast banitsas to vegan bob chorba, we ate all the traditional Bulgarian that we could find vegan versions of. Just because we’re vegan and vegetarian, we didn’t want to miss out on trying local Bulgarian cuisine, and fortunately there are some awesome vegan restaurants in Sofia with just this kind of food.

Vegan in Sofia with Charlie on Travel

Hlebar

If you’re looking for a place to try vegetarian banitsas then Hlebar is the place. Banitsas are long rolls of filo pastry stuffed with different fillings. They’re a traditional Bulgarian breakfast food, though you can get them all day long at Hlebar.

We ate the banitsas with vegan fillings – apple, raisins and brown sugar, and potato and mushroom – but only when eating them did it occur to us that maybe that pastry wasn’t all vegan (as the filo pastry is traditionally made with egg and probably butter). When we asked the staff there was a bit of a language barrier to finding out.

Hlebar also stocks a small shelf and fridge full of vegetarian and vegan whole foods, including yoghurt, plant milks (oat milk, rice milk, soya milk etc.) and grains. 

Banitsa in Hlebar - Vegan in Sofia - Charlie on Travel

Meal: Breakfast (veg-friendly).

Best Banitsa: Apple, raisin and brown sugar banitsa.

Cost: Pretty good value. A breakfast of two espressos and two banitsas cost 11lev.

Google Map: Vasil Aprilov Str. 14, Sofia 1000, Bulgaria

Furna

Furna is another excellent option for vegetarian and vegan banitsa in Sofia. We discovered this gem of a bakery on our second visit to Sofia and loved it. Their vegan banitsa have a perfectly crunchy outside and chewy inside. We tried three different flavours including vegan bio pumpkin, walnut and brown sugar, vegan potato and carrot, and vegetarian spinach and cheese. Their banitsa are all marked as vegetarian or vegan.

The bakery owners are really friendly, and offered us vegan chocolate and strawberry loaf to try with our espresso. Furna sell other baked goods such as small loaves of bread, including one made of einkorn flour, and yoghurt, juice and boza.

The doorway into Furna bakery

Three banitsas and two espresso kinda morning

Boxing up some banitsa to eat later (it’s better to eat them fresh though!)

Meal: Breakfast (veg-friendly).

Best Banitsa: Pumpkin, walnut and brown sugar.

Cost: 2.50-3.00 lev for a banitsa, depending on the filling.

Google Map: bul. “Stefan Stambolov” 2, 1000 Sofia Center, Sofia, Bulgaria

Sun Moon Alabin

Sun Moon Bakery was our first vegan discovery in Sofia. We first visited in 2016 and loved all of the Bulgarian options on the menu. We tried all of the vegan stuff under the “Bulgarian Cuisine” section, such as lutenica (a tomatoey relish) and kyopoolu (aubergine relish) which came with homemade wholemeal bread. A hearty white bean soup called bob chorba was best for really cold days, and there was also a great bunch/lunch dish called mish-mash (scrambled eggs if vegetarian, scrambled tofu if vegan, with onions and peppers), as well as mashed nettles.

On our second visit to Sofia in 2018, we found the restaurant had moved to a bigger premises and was now called Sun Moon Alabin. The menu is now a shorter version with less vegan items and no longer categorised by cuisine (previously all the Bulgarian options were labelled so). The food is still good and includes a number of the Bulgarian options mentioned above as well as curries and other world cuisines. The tempeh curry was the best dish we ate and we loved the unique raspberry wine (it’s made from 50% raspberries!)

Sun Moon have also opened another restaurant and a Sun Moon Store.

Vegan in Bulgaria - banitsa and cookie

Tempeh curry

Meal: Breakfast, lunch and dinner (vegetarian and vegan).

Best Vegan Food: Vegan mish-mash.

Cost: Expect to pay 25 lev for two main courses and a wine or beer each.

Google Map: ул. „Алабин“ 22, 1000 Sofia Center, Sofia

Salted Cafe

This vegetarian, vegan and raw cafe has a cool design which is a mix of industrial and floral, and it seems to be frequented by locals much more than tourists. When we visited there wasn’t an English menu but the waitresses were really lovely and happily translated for us – I’ve seen that since then they’ve now translated their menu into English.

All of the wraps on Salted’s menu are vegan! The bread is a type of homemade Einkorn wheat wrap, and the hummus and pesto is also homemade too. I super enjoyed my wrap stuffed with baked falafel, hummus, green pesto and salad, though Luke reckons the same with red pesto is even better. There were fresh vegan spring rolls too, also tasty.

Salted Cafe - Green Pesto Wrap - Vegan in Sofia - Charlie on Travel

Confusingly, we found this cafe through a listing for “Cobbo” on Facebook, but the cafe’s name is actually called “Salted” on the cafe front and menu. Afterwards, I realised there is now a new Facebook page for the cafe. Not really sure what’s going on there.

Meal: Lunch (vegetarian and vegan).

Best Vegan Food: Homemade wrap with falafel, hummus, green pesto and salad.

Cost: A few lev more expensive than Sunmoon, but still decent. We had three espressos, two wraps and three fresh spring rolls for 21lev.

Google Map: ul. “Bratya Miladinovi” 38, 1000 Sofia

Veda House

Veda (from ayurveda) House is a vegetarian teahouse not a block up from Sunmoon Bakery on Gladston. Though the tea is definitely the big pull factor of this place, there is a good sized lunch menu that’s all vegetarian and vegan as well. Luke had a really good seitan and quinoa dish, and I had a nice salad though am definitely still regretting not ordering a cool sounding dish of aromatic cauliflower with smoky tea from Mount Lapu that I saw another blogger speak highly of.

Their tea menu is crazy extensive and goes on for pages and pages. It includes traditional Bulgarian teas (I had the fig tea, which was very nice) and Chinese green teas (Luke had chun mee which translates to mean valuable eyebrows). The most expensive tea on the menu called a ‘white monkey’ tea. Supposedly this tea is grown at such high altitudes that they have to train monkeys to pick the leaves, and they only pick the leaves on days that are the perfect balance of cold and clear.

Meal: Lunch, or just tea (vegetarian and vegan).

Best Vegan Food: You want to try that aromatic cauliflower, right?

Cost: Kind of expensive.

Google Map: ul. “William Gladstone” 2, 1000 Sofia

Dream House

If you’re looking to eat really cheap then the Sunday night buffet at Dream House is what you want. It’s an all-you-can-eat vegan food buffet. There were lots of vegetable based dishes, as well as green lentils, beans, rice, tofu, salad and some plates of potatoes. I’ve got to say though, the food was cold – something which we don’t mind after living in Taiwan for a year where they eat cold vegan buffet food every lunch time, but some might mind.

I saw a couple of photos of dishes from the actual menu as well, which looked way more impressive than the buffet food, but I’ve no idea what the other options are really like. If you’re on a tight budget as a vegan in Sofia, then Dream House is definitely worth checking out.

Dream House is located in a bit off an odd place. It’s on a street off Vitosha Boulevard but it’s on the second floor next to a hostel. You have to enter through a dodgy looking and cold stairwell that looks an awful lot like a scene for a low-budget horror film. But once you get in the restaurant it’s nice and normal.

Meal: Lunch or dinner (vegetarian and vegan).

Best Vegan Food: We only had the buffet but it’s probably not the best dish there.

Cost: The Sunday night all-you-can-eat buffet cost just 7lev each.

Google Map: 50A Alabin St (1st floor), 1000 Sofia

Vegan Food in Central Market Hall

After wandering out of town to a vegan restaurant that turned out to be closed, we stumbled into the Central Market Hall (an indoor food market) near Serdika metro which was open at almost 8pm at night. We had a scout round and found a food stall called k-express that had vegetarian and vegan hot food in the bain marie.

We grabbed a pot of tomato, cucumber and red pepper salad, some hot shredded cabbage, and baked butternut squash to go. It was all very simple veg food at a super cheap price, and really good if you’re tired of eating out too much but don’t want to cook.

Vegan Food Pots at Food Hall - Vegan in Sofia - Charlie on Travel

Meal: Lunch and dinner (veg-friendly).

Best Vegan Food: All was nice, nothing particularly stand out.

Cost: Cheap. Three pots filled up with veggies and a bottle of water was 5lev (£1.96).

Tsentralni hali, Център, Sofia

Other Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants in Sofia

There were a number of other vegetarian and vegan restaurants that we wanted to try in Sofia but just didn’t have the time to get to, including Soul Kitchen, which is meant to be a little more high-end. There’s also a Loving Hut chain in Sofia, and an Indian restaurant called Saffron that apparently has some veggie options. A few people have left a comment on this blog post praising Tres Bien, another vegan cafe in Sofia that I hadn’t heard of until this!

Health Food Stores with Vegan Produce in Sofia

There are quite a few health food stores stocking vegetarian and vegan produce in Sofia, but we were so busy eating out at all the vegan restaurants that we only stopped by was Sun Moon Store.

I feel like I should mention boza as well. Boza is a fermented rye drink that’s really popular in Bulgaria. It’s a thick, gloopy brown drink that’s a little hard to stomach, but Bulgarians drink it for breakfast. I heard from vegan travel blogger Mostly Amelie, that boza apparently makes your boobs bigger, but content to be small breasted one gulp of boza was enough for me.

Boza - Vegan in Sofia - Charlie on Travel

Resources for Travelling Vegetarian and Vegan in Sofia

If you’re making the brave journey as a vegetarian or vegan traveller to Bulgaria, then you’ll probably want to glean as much info about finding veg-friendly options in Sofia and the rest of the country.

Happy Cow was super useful as usual and has listings for the majority of restaurants that are vegetarian and vegan in Sofia. There’s also a small Facebook group of vegetarians and vegans in Bulgaria worth checking out.

Have you been travelling as a vegetarian or vegan in Sofia, or around Bulgaria? How was your experience?