5 Vegan Dishes to Try in Albania

Vegan and heading to Albania soon? It’s challenging but not impossible. Here’s our guide on Vegan Dishes to Try in Albania to help you out!

TL;DR

I’ll be first to admit that I knew very little about Albania before we booked our flights. We had a wedding in Pescara, Italy and itchy feet led to a search for flights out of Pescara airport. Tirana in Albania is only 60 mins (and €24 that day) from Pescara. How could we not? My boyfriend had been there a decade before and was happy to go back to this beautiful, friendly country. He’s not one to miss an opportunity to wreck my head with phrases like “When I was here 100 years ago…”

So with flights booked, I began my research into what vegan dishes to try in Albania. Albanian cuisine is Mediterranean with Turkish, Italian, and Greek influences. This seems obvious to me now but was a very pleasant surprise on Googling. Albania’s borders closed during its communist era, as a result, the country had to make and grow everything itself. This experience combined with glacial water flowing down from the mountains into green valleys means the farms of Albania are producing some beautiful, organic, delicious vegetables. I could not get enough. If your accommodation has cooking facilities you’ll be striking gold. A quick stroll down the street and you won’t be long coming across fresh produce for sale.

Full disclosure, I do not lose my sh*t if my meal is accidentally vegetarian and not vegan. Sheep and goat’s milk is very common in Albania. They’re strong tasting so you’ll know if they’re in your meal. You know yourself, ask the person taking your order if there’s egg or diary in the dish. The internet told me that’d we struggle with English in Albania. I don’t know the stats on English speakers there, but I can tell you the internet is wrong. All the people serving us had either excellent English or got someone else who did to help us out.

Albania gets hot in summer, really f*ing hot. We visited in July 2023 as the European heatwave hit so decided to head to the Albanian Alps up North to cool down. The other option was to try to find shade on the overcrowded beaches in the South. Not dissing the beaches in Albania, I’ll be back to see them outside peak season. July is the month when everyone flocks to them so things can be very crowded. But it also means I didn’t get to eat all the vegan food on offer to tourists in the South. This is a good and bad thing. Good in that I got to eat a hell of a lot more local/traditional food. Bad in that there was most likely a lot of Greek-influenced vegan food that I missed out on.

I did eat a lot, eight days of eating Albanian traditional meze plates. So, here are my suggestions for vegan food to try in Albania.

Vegan Food in Albania

Veggies in Albania are super fresh and organic so what better way to sample some than a grilled plate of them? Grilled vegetables/ Sallatë me perime zgare was on the menu everywhere we visited. We ordered it a bunch of times. Plates of grilled courgette (zucchini), aubergine (eggplant), and peppers, drizzled in olive oil and a balsamic reduction. Every time they were delicious.

Another gorgeous veggie we spotted on tons of menus was stuffed peppers/Speca të mbushur. The peppers are stuffed with rice, spices, and mint and then baked. Tasty af and filling. These guys can sometimes have egg or cheese in them so if the menu doesn’t say vegan make sure to ask your server

Speaking of stuffed veggies, I had an unfortunate incident with a stuffed aubergine in Spain a few years ago. We were in Malaga and I was hangry, so hangry my boyfriend was fearing for his life. We stopped at the nearest restaurant which happened to serve local food. Unfortunately, it was a very meat-heavy menu and in Spanish. My broken, barely-there Spanish led me to believe I’d be safe with the stuffed aubergine. I thought, at worst it’d have cheese but Bob’d be alive. Oh how wrong I was. There was lamb mince under the layer of cheese and veg. I swallowed my glass of wine and shed a proverbial tear for the death of the animal and Bob. But when all seemed lost the server appeared with a basket of bread and a salad. I thanked all the deities I don’t normally believe in

Our Albanian stuffed aubergines/Patëllxhanët Mbushur me perime did not have lamb in them but vegetables. Many places we went to specified if there was cheese or not. But as these babies are all cooked fresh, it’s easy to ask for “no cheese” (“Pa djathë” in Albanian). My favourite was stuffed with a tomato ratatouille-type thing, yum!

Japrak/stuffed grape leaves is another dish I was already familiar with. I’ve known them as dolma or stuffed vine leaves but in Albania, they are called japrak dolma, japrak, or in English, stuffed grape leaves. The leaves are filled with rice and herbs and I haven’t come across them not vegan so definitely a safe bet!

I’ve given you four vegan dishes to try in Albania but I have saved the best for last. I have a deep-rooted love for all things pastry. I adore it so much that I went to Copenhagen to eat Danish pastries to see, if like Guinness, they taste best in their home country. They do. (Pre-vegan days of course.) So let me tell you I was beyond ecstatic to discover byrek/börek/burek. This beautiful filo pastry pie is sold in restaurants and street stalls for about 50c-€1. It has spinach or onion and tomato as vegan options. If you’ve been on my Instagram during my trip to Albania you’ll know that I did, with no regrets, eat byrek at least once a day for a week.

Top 5 Vegan Options

1. Sallatë me perime zgare – Plate of grilled courgette (zucchini), aubergine (eggplant), and peppers all drizzled in olive oil and a balsamic reduction
2. Speca të mbushur – Peppers stuffed with rice, spices, and mint and then baked
3. Patëllxhanët Mbushur me perime  – Aubergine (eggplant) stuffed with vegetables
4. Japrak – Stuffed grape leaves with rice and herbs
5. Byrek/börek/burek – Spinach/Onion & tomato filo pastry pies.

Have you been to Albania? Tell me, how was it? Did you find it easy to be vegan or not? I love to read your comments.

What I Was Reading in Albania

Lea Ypi – Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History

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