The Worst Countries To Visit As A Vegan
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But you eat chicken, right? I have been asked this on four continents. 🙃
Some countries are genuinely hard to eat in as a vegan. Not because anyone’s being difficult, but because the entire food culture was built on things you don’t eat.
These five were the hardest for me, with what actually worked in each. All of them are worth visiting. You just want to arrive prepared rather than hopeful.
✈️ 1. Argentina: Meat. Is. Everywhere.
Argentina is the hardest country on this list and it isn’t close.
The parrilla is the centre of social life, empanadas are beef by default, and side salads arrive with ham or tuna on them without being asked. Even the vegetable dishes are often cooked in beef fat.
What works: sin carne gets you vegetarian at best, so say sin carne, sin pollo, sin queso, sin huevo and expect to repeat it. Empanadas de verdura are usually fine once you’ve checked for lard. The produce markets are excellent and cheap, so book somewhere with a kitchen. Buenos Aires does have real vegan cafes and they’re worth the trip across town.
HappyCow is the app to have on your phone before you land, not after. Here’s the rest of how I travel.
✈️ 2. Japan: Sneaky Fish Everywhere
Japan looks like it should be easy. Rice, tofu, vegetables, noodles. Then you learn about dashi.
Dashi is fish stock and it’s the foundation of the entire cuisine. It’s in the miso soup, the noodle broth, the dipping sauce and most vegetable side dishes. Bonito flakes get sprinkled on things after cooking, so even a dish made without dashi can arrive with fish on it.
What works: shojin ryori, the Buddhist temple cuisine, is entirely vegan and genuinely one of the best meals I’ve eaten anywhere. Convenience stores are better than you’d think for onigiri and edamame. Carry nuts and seaweed snacks, and get a card written in Japanese explaining dashi and katsuobushi. That card did more work than any app.
🥛 3. Russia: Dairy And Meat Are Standard
Russian food is built on sour cream, butter and meat stock. Even the vegetable soups usually start with a bone broth.
There’s one useful loophole: Orthodox fasting periods mean Russian cooking has a whole category of postnoe food, which is traditionally free of meat, dairy and eggs. Ask for postnoe and you’ll sometimes get a much better answer than asking for vegan.
What works: self-catering for most meals. Bread, beans, fruit and buckwheat are all cheap and everywhere. Bring your own plant milk if you want it in coffee, because outside the big cities it’s hard to find.
Tip: Moscow and St Petersburg are a different world from the rest of the country and have plenty of options, including Mox. Outside those two, plan on cooking.
🧀 4. France: Cheese, Butter, And Blank Stares
French cooking runs on butter, cream and stock, and that’s before you get to the cheese course. Vegan cheese and almond milk exist in Paris and become rare fast once you leave it.
The bigger obstacle is cultural. Asking a French kitchen to change a dish is closer to an insult than a request, so you get resistance before you get an answer.
What works: North African, Lebanese and Vietnamese restaurants, which France has in abundance and which are usually excellent. Ratatouille and pan bagnat without the tuna are safe French options. Markets, bread and olives will carry you through lunch. Eat your main meal where the cuisine already suits you.
✈️ 5. South Korea: Kimchi Isn’t Always Vegan
Korea is full of vegetables and most of them have been near a fish. Anchovy broth is the base of countless dishes, and traditional kimchi is fermented with salted shrimp or fish sauce.
The kimchi one catches everybody, because it looks like the most plant based thing on the table.
What works: temple food, balwoo gongyang, which is fully vegan and superb. Bibimbap without the egg and beef, ordered carefully. Vegan kimchi exists and you have to ask for it specifically. Learn to say no meat, no fish sauce, no anchovy broth as three separate things, because dropping one of them is how you end up with anchovy broth.
✅ Final Thoughts
None of these countries are off limits. They just need more planning than somewhere like India or Thailand, where half the menu is already vegan.
Three things make all of it easier: a translation card written by an actual speaker, somewhere with a kitchen for at least half your trip, and enough food in your bag to skip one meal without it becoming a crisis. Bars, nuts and roasted chickpeas cover that, and I keep my B12 in the same pocket so I don’t forget it while travelling.
Do that and the hardest country on this list becomes merely inconvenient. 💚
🛒 The Travel Kit That Makes This Easy
Three things make a hard country merely inconvenient. Two of them are in this list, the third is a translation card written by an actual speaker.
- GoMacro bars: survives a week at the bottom of a rucksack, which is the only spec that matters.
- Larabars: dates and nuts, nothing else. For when you want sweet.
- Roasted chickpea snacks: savoury, which matters more than you think on day four of sweet bars.
- Almonds: the cheapest way to turn a bad food day into a survivable one.
- Seaweed snacks: packs flat, weighs nothing, and genuinely useful in Japan.
- A B12 supplement: travel is when I forget it. It lives in the same pocket as my passport now.
📚 More Vegan Tips
- 7 Common Vegan Mistakes That Secretly Deplete Your Iron
- Caught Off Guard: 7 Vegan Label Mistakes I Made and What I Learned
- 9 Unexpectedly Luxurious Vegan Fabrics Changing Haute Couture
