Being vegan in Korea has never been easier thanks to the Vegan Festa! While some challenges remain, a trip to the Vegan Festa will allow you to see just how far the vegan community and vegan brands have come in Korea.
What is the Vegan Festa?
The Vegan Festa is hosted by Excom and sponsored by The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, SBA, Energy Economics newspaper and National Geographic. This year was the 7th annual fair and it featured 180 exhibitors, 300 booths and 35,000 visitors. If you missed it this year, don’t worry – you can always go next year!
The purpose of the fair is to provide content related to vegan brands and products, promote sustainability and environmental friendliness, and help popularise the vegan lifestyle. Certainly, after visiting we felt like being vegan in Korea would be much less of a struggle compared to in the past.
Since many more brands are available, you wouldn’t feel like you were missing out on many things that were impossible to find previously. There was vegan tuna, vegan bagels, vegan butter… everything!
If you’re interested in hearing more from the professionals, they have you covered on that too! From 1pm~5pm on the Friday there were speakers who covered topics like veganism from a UK to a global perspective, vegan trends, Amazon US vegan trends, and know how seminars.
One of the most impressive things about this year’s Vegan Festa was the range of brands and products. Naturally we think of vegan food when we think of “vegan”, but there were many other vegan products such as shoes and handbags, cleaning products and personal hygiene products.
There was even vegan pet food!
However, it has to be said that we were most interested in all the food! We were able to try a great selection of vegan food, including ice cream, coconut milk, jjajangmyeon, nut butter, coffee, tea, biscuits and many more.
Let’s talk about the food/drink!
Let’s take a look at some of the food/drink brands we would like to highlight.
Who doesn’t love a good bagel, especially with a nice spread like nut butter? Well, you’re in luck even if you’re not vegan because brands Western Bagel and Nutterious have you covered!
Western Bagel “has been a leading bagel company for over 70 years offering the best New York-style bagels with a West Coast twist, healthy and protein-rich.” Certainly, it’s easy to see why Western Bagel have remained so popular. They are DELICIOUS!
Add to these bagels nut butter from Nutterious and you’ve got yourself an incredible breakfast or cheeky snack. We got to try out the original nut butter which contains macademia nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, cashew nuts and peanuts.
It was probably the best nut butter I’ve ever had!
Moving onto dumplings – we got to try vegan kimchi dumplings. My friend was especially happy about the dumplings because she doesn’t eat pork but it’s so hard to find dumplings that don’t contain pork. Finally this was her chance!
The dumplings were great – I really enjoyed eating them with soy sauce for that salty tang!
Finally, let me share with you some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had – salted caramel & choclate flake ice cream from Nice Kekki. I’ve honestly been dreaming about this ice cream. As soon as I had the first bite I went “wow!” and the lovely staff members at the booth burst out laughing.
But I couldn’t help it – it was just that good!
In conclusion…
I’m so glad that we got to experience this year’s Vegan Festa. It was great to see how many vegan brands there are in Korea now and try out some delicious food and drink. Even though I’m not vegan, I really think the vegan lifestyle is great and I’m happy to support and promote the initiative.
I hope that the festa is also encouraging for those who want to be vegan in Korea but worry that it would be too difficult.
Are you vegan or have you ever considered being vegan? Let us know your experiences!