
Our summer holiday this year took us to Gothenburg. It was partly the weather that lured us in: Prague is HOT in the summer, and the idea of travelling further south in Europe felt like a bit much. We thought a Scandinavian summer would be similar to the British summers we grew up with, and that proved to be the case. One day was 26 degrees, everything else was comfortably around 20. That’s a perfect summer for me! More Scandinavian summers may be in order.
The other main attraction was the Way Out West festival, which is a three day event right in the city centre (no camping!). Dr HH attended the festival for just one day a few years ago on a solo trip, and we had been looking for an opportunity to attend together. So we planned to spend half a week hiking on the islands nearby, and the rest at the festival. Relaxing stuff, as always for our trips! We weren’t super excited about the vegan options in the city (you can revisit Dr HH’s solo trip here and here), but thought the scenery and music would outweigh the limited food options.
On arrival, we headed straight to an all-vegan restaurant to get the holiday underway. Blackbird is a casual place that feels a bit like a pub but it does have table service. Service was really great. It seemed quite popular, so it might be a good idea to book.

Between two of us, we shared the chilli cheese for a starter. We were expecting slightly larger bites, but they were tiny! We got four balls in a serving. Temperature-wise, they were hot but not scalding – sometimes I fear these kinds of bites will contain molten cheese. The chilli heat was really welcome. The cheese was nicely melted and had a pleasant savoury taste.

For his main, Dr HH ordered linguini vegangole, which is sea-inspired pasta with oyster mushrooms and white beans. The pasta was good, nice thick noodles with a bit of bite. There was a good seafood flavour to the whole dish and he liked the texture from the oyster mushrooms. There were a lot of beans, which added some heartiness to the dish, but he thought they were a little too soft. He would want to replace them with something with a bit of crunch to elevate the dish. The garlic bread was nice, but one little round felt a bit miserly. The salad on the side was fine.

I ordered the potato salad with schnitzel. There’s a choice between tofu and seitan, and I chose seitan. It was a nice cut of seitan, but I’ve had much bigger schnitzels in the past so I was a little disappointed. The dish seemed to fit its billing of potato salad first – the salad helping was quite large. It was a tasty potato salad, with plenty of potato and nice flavours. There was a little salad on the side with a really sharp dressing, which was quite nice but very sharp.

For dessert we both ordered the Vegall. This is apparently a recreation of a local chocolate bar, and it was amazing. I was initially a bit disappointed to see its size as it was a little small, but it was perfectly judged – it was so rich, I didn’t need any more. It had a chocolatey puffed rice base, and was topped with a rich chocolate ganache. We were given spoons, but couldn’t drive the spoons through the base so we just used our fingers. It was really delicious.
After the mains were fairly average, this dessert really elevated the experience. We thought about returning later in the trip so we could get the dessert again, but it didn’t pan out. Recommended nevertheless!
















































