Are Liverpool Christmas markets vegan/vegetarian friendly?

As the countdown to Christmas begins, it feels only right to take a trip to the iconic Christmas markets located in Liverpool city centre. If you love mulled wine, shop stalls and Christmas music this is definitely a trip worth taking during the festive period. However, as more students adopt a fully vegetarian or vegan diet, myself included, I wanted to discover whether or not these Christmas markets offer a variety of foods for us vegetarian/vegan students and what can be done about it.

Christmas markets are infamous for their pancakes, waffles and German sausages which was evident as I walked around the stalls. As a vegan, this is obviously not ideal as these sweet treats are smothered in chocolate, smarties and marshmallows, with the only other topping alternatives being strawberries and bananas.

As I continued to walk around I noticed that most savoury food was meat orientated. There are burgers, hot dogs, pork and chicken portions as well a Yorkshire pudding wrap stall. This sells your choice of meat, gravy and stuffing in a Yorkshire pudding which is shaped like a wrap around the rest of the food. Unfortunately, there was no meat alternatives here such as Quorn meat or a nut roast and this continued to be the case at most stalls selling meat.

If you’re a vegetarian, fortunately for you there are lots of sweet snacks you can buy away from the pork and chicken. From a pick n mix selection, to hot cookie dough, fudge, pancakes, and festive hot chocolates which all looked very tasty and appealing.

However, if you’re a vegan the markets unfortunately do not offer much food or drink which you can buy. Unless you want home made dumplings with mushrooms (as pictured below) there was not any other alternative food choices. Most stalls sold meat such as German sausages, or dairy, gelatin snacks which are very sugary and unhealthy too.

I believe there should be a vegetarian/vegan stall which sells meat substitutes such as Quorn sausages, or soya milk hot chocolates as well as vegan friendly sweet snacks. This would be great for vegan/vegetarian students as well as other members of the public wanting to try out meat free foods. This would be successful in my opinion as it would be unique and set it apart from the neighbouring food stalls.

Hopefully this will change in the future, as vegetarianism is on the rise the food markets will soon have to adapt to peoples meat free requirements. Although there are some alternative options for a vegetarian diet, these only seem to be sweet sugary desserts. It would be nice to see some alternative food stalls at the Christmas markets which everyone can eat and enjoy!

Feature Image Credit: Author