Healthy Vegan Eats in Helsinki: Ruohonjuuri Ekomarket

Ruohonjuuri is a chain of health food stores in Finland.  They have two locations in Helsinki, one at the Kamppi shopping mall and one on Itäkatu, street #5.  They also have locations in the cities of Tampere and Turku.  Inside these stores you will find a variety of organic mostly local produce, dairy products from biodynamic farms, meat substitutes (many of which are made locally), organic grains like quinoa and a variety of rices and dry beans, supplements and raw food snacks, household cleaning supplies, and a wide variety of organic and vegan bath and body products.

The store outside the Kamppi shopping mall has a raw smoothie bar!  That's where I had my lunch one day. I'm going to share some photos from inside the store and then I'll talk about the smoothie bar at the end of this post :) 



The Organic produce section is small but there is a decent variety!  This is just one section, there was more.

Organic Tofu is 3,90 Euro!  That is $5.65 US Dollars!!  And I didn't find coupons in circulation.  I did try this brand of tofu at a friend's house where we cooked the tofu and veggies on a Wok grill.  It was delicious :)

Locally made meat substitutes pictured here.  I didn't try any of these since we were staying in a hotel and didn't have a kitchen, but these look really good and a decent price for locally made stuff.

This was really great to see.  You can refill your shampoo and laundry detergent containers here! 

I found this book and several other US books on raw food and veganism in this store and in bookstores.  This is a copy of Michael Pollan's Food Rules :)

 

And now for the Raw Smoothie Bar...I thought it was nicely decorated :)

The menu required translation!  They said they were getting a new menu in English due to popular demand.  The city is really international and they get a fair amount of tourists in this location.

I got the "Valcoinen Norsu", which means "White Elephant" in English.  It was not a sweet smoothie, more creamy and a bit salty.

The cost for this size (I think it was 16 oz) was 6,30 Euro which was $9.13 US Dollars.  I pay around $7-8 for the same size raw smoothie at Cafe 118 here in Orlando, so maybe not much of a price difference there.

I highly recommend giving Ruohonjuuri a visit if you happen to end up in Helsinki for business or vacation.  Just make sure you check the hours on their website since I found that store and restaurant hours seem to change according to the seasons.