Wednesday, June 15, 2011

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. 

2 comments:

Kristin said...

The smoothie looks good and the stores look really cute as well. I don't know if I will ever make it over to Finland, but it looks very beautiful.

Gretchen said...

Thanks Kristin! Yeah, Finland was not even on the radar until my husband had to go for a business trip. It really is beautiful there in the summer, I would go again if I had the chance.