The World Vegan Travel Podcast
The World Vegan Travel Podcast
Vegan Food Tour Utrecht: Exploring Dutch Culinary Culture | Daisy Scholte
In today’s episode, we’re chatting with Daisy Scholte, the founder and creative director of Vegan Food Tour Nederland. Daisy creates immersive, story-driven vegan food tours in Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam—bringing travelers straight into the heart of the Netherlands’ plant-based dining scene.
She’ll be sharing how a transformative overland world trip led her to veganism, why Utrecht is becoming one of Europe’s most exciting vegan-friendly destinations, and how food tours can open hearts, spark curiosity, and build real community… all while being incredibly fun and delicious.There are so many cool places, restaurants, and resources mentioned in this episode—so don’t forget to check out the show notes and the blog post to get all the links, photos, and details.
Let’s chat with Daisy!
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[00:00:00]
Hi Daisy and welcome to The World Vegan Travel Podcast. Thank you. Thank
you
for having
me.
I'm so thrilled to have you on, to talk about a very special city in the Netherlands, which is Utrecht, and I am very excited to have you on to tell me about, or tell our listeners about, what makes this city unique and special and very vegan-friendly.
But first of all, why don't you tell us what it is that you do in the vegan travel space.
Yeah. Together with my husband, we founded Vegan Food Tour in the Netherlands. Every weekend we run Vegan Food Tour in Utrecht, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. This is basically a fun afternoon out. A vegan guide takes you through the city, andalong the way, you're going to visit seven vegan restaurants. And in all these places, you get something to eat, sweet orpastry or tiny versions of a meal. And just a lot of delicious [00:01:00] vegan food. And while you are enjoying the food, the guide tells the story about the entrepreneurs behind the restaurant because vegan entrepreneurs, they have a story to tell. You don't just open a vegan restaurant, and you have a reason, you have a mission. Andthese are the stories that we share while we are walking through the city. We also, of course, look at the beautyof our cities. They are all unique in their own ways andyou don't have to expect like a historical city tour. We are not historians, we are foodies. But we love our city as well. So we tell stories about the things that we love about our city, the artwork that stands out, the hidden gems that only the locals know about. So that's the kind of things that you can expect. So all in all, it's about three and a half to four hours, enjoying the city, enjoying good food, enjoying good company, and at the end of the day, you are going to be really full with good food and good stories. Yes.
I love food tours like this, especially when you're in a very vegan-friendly [00:02:00] place. You can't visit all of the restaurants, especially if you only have a limited time, of course. And this is great way to just choose a few, and you can go back to the ones that you really love later on in your trip and get other recommendations from the guide as well. Yeah, I'm a big fan of these kinds of tours. Yeah.
We actually have a bit of an extra as well, so we always recommend, especially travelers that are coming from abroad to do our tour at the beginning of their stay. After our tour you get discounts, vouchers for all the restaurants that we visit. Then you have all the discounts as well for when you go back. Yeah. Make sure to plan it at the start of your trip.
Fabulous. So how did the idea of creating and running Vegan Food Tour in your home country come to pass?
Yeah, so this was like a few puzzle pieces coming together, falling together. In 2017, me and my husband, we went on a world trip and we tried to do it as sustainable as [00:03:00] possible. So what we did, for example, weavoided flying. So we traveled overland. It was also in the choices that we made, the kind of accommodations we picked. But soon after we left, we also turned vegan. During our trip, we had all the time and all the experiences to learn so much about veganism and about all the advantages for people, planet, and especially animals. At the same time, when we were visiting new cities, we would try to do food tours. We love food. Actually all the vegans I know, love food, which is funny because people often think that if you're a vegan, you must not love food because there's so many things that you can't eat. But it's definitely opposite. So we were enjoying all the food in all these cities and had all these amazing experiences. Then we came back in 2020. We had to come back because of Corona. We came back into the Netherlands where everything was closed. But at that time in the Netherlands, you were still allowed to get takeaways from restaurants.
So we were walking the empty city, trying to get some takeaway food here and there. And then we saw all these new [00:04:00] vegan restaurants that weren't there before we left. We tried new cakes and we tried like a pastel de nata, like a Portuguese treat.
And and they were all so amazing, so good. And we really felt, every time we tried these foods, everyone needs to know this. And in the beginning we were just sharing it with our friends, ' Have you tried this, and have you been there yet?' We really felt that more people needed to know about these places.
At the same time, we also felt, because of everything that we learned, that we wanted to do more than just be vegans ourselves. But we are not really the activists, to stand on the barricades and protest. We were looking for a way to do something that fits more,what we enjoy, and how the kind of people that we are. And then with our experiences from our trip, all these things fell together, and we thought, 'Yeah,' if we wanna inspire people, people enjoy traveling, people enjoy food, we enjoy sharing these stories. So let's start a food tour and use this as a way to [00:05:00] introduce people to vegan food.
I love
it.
Do the tours run every day? Can you buy like a join in tour? Like if I'm a solo traveler, can I just join in on an existing tour? How do people book?
It differs a bit from city to city, but every weekend we run tours. So in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, only on Saturdays, but in Utrecht we have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And on Saturday we also have a bicycle tour which is also exciting. You can just buy tickets on our website, veganfoodtour.nl, pick the city and pick the tour, and then you can just buy a ticket. It's a mixed group with a maximum of 12 people. So yeah.
Oh, fantastic. So can you explain where Utrecht is? Give us a little bit of an idea, like orient us a little bit about this city.
Yeah. So Utrecht is in the heart of the Netherlands. It's right in the middle of the country. It's our fourth biggest city, and it's often overlooked, especially by tourists that come from far, like the [00:06:00] US for example. People, when they think about the Netherlands, they think about Amsterdam. So they just go to Amsterdam, maybe do a side trip to Rotterdam. What they often don't know, is that only a 20 to 25 minute train ride from Amsterdam, is this amazing city called Utrecht. If you take a train and you leave the station in Utrecht, you are right in the heart of the city, in the historic city. It's a small city. For Dutch standards it's considered big, butI traveled, so I know it's a tiny city. It's walkable and if you ask me, and I always say this to the tourists as well, our canals are way prettier than the ones in Amsterdam. Oh. Amsterdam is known for its canals. And don't get me wrong, the canals are amazing and really beautiful in Amsterdam, but in Utrecht, there is something extra, and that's very unique. There's no other city in the Netherlands that has this. You can actually walk along the water because in our canals we have warps. You can go down the canal and there are platforms along the water where you can walk. [00:07:00] And in the city, in the heart of the city, there's a lot of restaurants there as well. So you can actually sit there and enjoy a drink or food or whatever. And it's so beautiful and it's really one of a kind, you won't find that anywhere. And that makes it extra special. If you walk down those parts of the canals, it, it really feels like you're traveling back in time. There's no cars, there's nothing that reminds you of the time that we are in now. It really feels that you are going back in time. So it's really beautiful.
You've talked about how the canals really make Utrecht unique. Are there some other things about Utrecht that make it special or that visitors would want to know about to decide to put Utrecht on their list?
I think the fact that everything is walkable,is really nice because you won't have that in Amsterdam, for example. So you can really, if you're here for the weekend, you can see a lot in one weekend. It's also known for cycling. Utrecht is like the bicycle capital of Europe. Amsterdam is busy and crowded with [00:08:00] bicycles, but Utrecht is just like that when it comes to cycling, but compared to Amsterdam, I think cycling in Utrecht is safer because we have a lot of streets that are really designed for cyclists. The cars need to stay behind the bicycles. We have a really beautiful,we call it a Dom Tower, the Dom Tower, and this is the highest church tower that we have in the Netherlands. They started building it around the 13 hundreds. And in those days, Utrecht, for a while, was the capital city of the Netherlands. So therefore they decided that no other city was allowed to build a church tower that was higher than the Dom Tower. So that's why it's still the highest. And you can climb it. You have to be fit because it's 465 steps. Oh wow. Once you're up there, the view is just amazing. And because the Netherlands is really flat, on a clear day, you can see Amsterdam and Rotterdam from top of the Dom Tower. So that's [00:09:00] pretty cool. The city center is surrounded by a canal that goes around the city. So you can take, what we call a bicycle boat. So it's a boat where you can sit with two or four people and you have like the pedal.
Oh, yes. And then you, yeah. And then you can sail the single, is what we call it. Next to the waterway there's also a park that goes all the way around the city center. Just to give you an idea of the size, if you do the whole circle, it's only five and a half to six kilometers. So our whole city center is packed in this circle of six kilometers.
So yeah, I also guide the toursthat we offer in Utrecht, and every time I walk through this park, I enjoy it again as if it's my first time, because with the seasons, with the different weather types, everything, it changes every time I'm there. I'm there every week, and every weekend it looks different to me. So it's just so beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.
You clearly love your city. [00:10:00] It's awesome. Utrecht seems to have a strong local identity. How does that reflect in the food scene in the vegan scene?
Yeah. I think, in Utrecht we still have a lot of locally owned shops. As you might know, in Amsterdam, especially in the more touristic parts, it's a lot of big chains. For example, we call them 'Nutella' shops, they are taking over, so they sell like pancakes with Nutella, which is nothing Dutch. It's just something the tourist like, apparently. We still have all these beautiful shops and boutique shops. And also we have a lot of vintage shops. All of these shops and restaurants are locally run and locally owned.
That really shows the vibe of Utrecht. It's a very young city. It's also a student city. And it's, we would say, like a left wing orientated city.
Yes. You can really see that for the facts, for example, that we have so many vegan restaurants. I know that Amsterdam is in the top threeof the Happy Cow vegan cities in the [00:11:00] world. We have a lot of vegan restaurants in Amsterdam, but if you look at the number of inhabitants that we have in Utrecht compared to the number of vegan restaurants, we have the same amount of vegan restaurants as they have in Amsterdam. The difference being that, yeah, everything is walkable in Utrecht. Another thing that I love so much about the vegan scene, especially in Utrecht, is that all these vegan restaurant owners, they don't see each other as competitors. They really see each other as partners in crime. Like we have to work together. So they help each other. They support each other in very practical ways. For example, there's like a bakery and they make cakes that
another vegan restaurant sells with their coffee, for example.
Do you have a favorite story or guest experience from your tours that you would love to share with our listeners?
Yeah. So what we do in our tours, it's almost towards the end, we always add a bit of what we call soft activism. The biggest part of our tour is [00:12:00] fun, laughter. We also joke a lot, we make fun of ourselves as well, just to show that vegans are also fun people to hang out with. And that's really part of our mission as well. So it's a lot of fun, good food, positive experiences. But then towards the end we also want to share why we choose to be vegan, and what the advantages are for the animal people and the planet. So this is our soft activism part where we go for a long walk in the park and during that walk, we challenge people to discuss certain topics that we present to them. So we are not lecturing or speaking. We really leave it up to them to talk about the topics that we offer to them.
So for example, it could be a question like, how many animals do you think we kill in the Netherlands on a daily basis, for example. And then people talk about this, and then afterwards they get the answer, of course. So we can talk about that too. But it can also be about, for example,soy is [00:13:00] causing deforestation. So all these meat replacements are a problem for the climate. So what do you think? And then we talk about this, and so we can really take away these ideas that, that the wrong ideas that people have. You never know how people are going to respond to this. We only have positive experiences, thankfully, but once I had a woman crying. She came up to me after we discussed these topics. Then the tears were running down her face. I was like, oh my God, what happened? I was really shocked because I don't want to upset anyone, right? Yeah, it has to be a fun experience in the end. But then she thanked me and she said, no, these are tears because you really showed me why I should stop eating meat and dairy. This was the last push that I needed.
So it sounds to me that you don't just have vegans on your tours. You have all sorts of people. I'm surprised that some people who are not vegan are finding your tours and doing them independently of, yeah, anything else?
Yeah, [00:14:00] actually we target non-vegans, especially. Vegans know where to find us. Vegans have a radar for vegan things. Yes. But we want to have the non-vegans, especially on our tour, because we can teach them something, and they're trying something new. We have a lot of people on our tour that have never tried a vegan burger.
They tried their first vegan burger with us. So that's really exciting. So we know, with every booking we ask, are you vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, et cetera, et cetera. So therefore we know that66% of our participants are not vegan or vegetarian, so they're still eating meat.
That's
a lot, surprising.
I know. Yeah. Especially in Utrecht. And I think ,there's two reasons for, or actually three reasons. One is that we are the only food tourer in Utrecht. If you want to do a food tour, you're going to end up with us. That's one. The other one is, like you said, vegans dragging their non-vegan friends and family alongon our tours. And we also do company outings, which is often then organized by one vegan and they take [00:15:00] 20 non-vegan colleagues with them, for example. But the third one, is also, we get amazing reviews. If you look at our reviews, we only get five star reviews and a lot of non-vegans in their review, they state, that it was so much fun and I'm not vegan.
So other non-vegans can read like, oh, okay, so even if you're not vegan, this could be a great experience. Sometimes I have a group that is only vegans and maybe a few vegetarians, and this is like a warm bath.
This is easy. We can have these easy conversations. We can reflect and talk about the challenges of being a vegan and recognize each other's stories. So that's really nice. But I enjoy it even more if I have a group of a hundred percent non-vegan because there's sometimes, there's people at the start who are really skeptical.
They're like, oh my God, I have to do this because my boss takes me, or my wife took me or my daughter, and you can see their eyes rolling in the beginning. I once had the guy actually, I heard him whispering to his [00:16:00] colleague, something like, oh, we're going to have extra steak tonight to make up for this day or something like that.
And they couldn't imagine that the food was going to be so good. The first bite, we get Portuguese pastry. The Portuguese cut. Exactly. And the original is only animal-based ingredients and this one is vegan. And they were already like, yeah, it can never be this good. And they took a bite and you could just see the grumpy face turning into a big smile. And the rest of the tour,their enthusiasm, their energy, everything went up. At the end of the tour, they were like, wow. And we are going to do this with our menu. We're going to add that. And if you are ever going to organize a tour in our city, please know where to find us. We will help you.
Gosh, I actually love the idea of marketing these tours to hospitality groups. The fact that you are so accessible by train. Potentially you could have every hotel chain or big restaurant coming to you [00:17:00] and doing a tour and then just in a really nice, fun way without any pressure, oh my goodness, I've got a vegan coming in tonight. I dunno what to cook for them. I haven't got time. Exactly. They can just be exposed in a really relaxed way with their peers aboutdelicious, vegan food and what's possible. I've never really thought about that as a potential way to market to groups of people like that, for this kind of thing. That's really cool.
Yeah. We get a lot of hospitality groups, exactly for this reason.And what we really learned, is that these chefs, it's often chefs or the managers, they don't want to have anything to do with plant-based eating or whatever. But it's not about the plant-based eating, it's about them thinking that they are going to lose on quality. That they cannot do what they were taught when they were going through education.
They think that they're going to lose something, and when they do a tour, they experience that [00:18:00] actually, it is about creativity and possibilities, and trying new things, and actually thinking outside of the box. That suddenly makes them very exciting because now they can use all their knowledge and their skills to try new things.
I love it.
So Daisy, I'm definitely convinced about the fact that I have to go to Utrecht on my next visit to the Netherlands. I'm curious, if you can share with us, maybe your favorite restaurants or outlets or eateries, where we can experience Dutch food that's veganized. I'm thinking, stroke, waffles.
Yeah. Okay. The Dutch cuisine is very limited. We don't really have a strong food culture. Actually, our food culture is very much influenced by,yeah,more exotic kitchens, like Indonesian food or Indian food. I would not necessarily recommend you to go and find Dutch vegan food, and it's going to be hard, as well, to find really good Dutch vegan food. In [00:19:00] Utrecht you will find some brands in the supermarket, but not really in a restaurant or in a shop. It's not such a touristy city. When you go to Amsterdam, there's a lot of these Stroopwafel shops. And I know that there's one. It's on the Kalverstraat, which is like the main shopping street in Amsterdam. And they do a vegan version of their stroopwafels, for sure. But when you're in Utrecht, there's one place where you can try really typical Dutch food in a vegan version. So in the Netherlands, we have what we call snack bars. And a snack bar is basicallya shop where they sell fried food, like fries, but yeah,it's not like a McDonald's or anything, because they only sell like the typical Dutch snacks. So I can name them, but it probably will not mean anything to you. But one of the very typical Dutch things is a Bitterballen, which is like a small fried ball with a crustyoutside and a soft inside. And the original is [00:20:00] stuffed with meat, often with leftover meats from the industry. It is a mixture of horse meat, andcows meat, and pigs meat, and everything. Whatever is there. But then there is a snack bar called Last Vegas. It's the only fully vegan snack bar that we have in the Netherlands. Oh. And they have the Bitterballen in a vegan version.
I've had so many, especially men in our tour, trying that vegan Bitterballen and telling us,' I cannot taste the difference. This is exactly the same as the meat version, so no reason for me to eat the meat version anymore.' There are cafes all around the country that have vegan Bitterballen, but sometimes they're stuffed with mushrooms or with beetroot or just all these creative interpretations. And they're nice, but it's not the same. But this one at Last Vegas, you have to try it. That's as Dutch as you can get it. Yeah, for sure.
That's interesting. This snack bar tradition. [00:21:00] Is it possible that this is also popular in Belgium? A friend of mine who's from Belgium, and he took us to a vegan-friendly snack bar with just, yeah, tons of fried food and fried vegan meats and that kind of thing.
It was fun.
Yeah. No, sure. Yeah,it's similar. We have a few snacks that you probably won't find in most places in Belgium, and the other way around as well. But, yeah, it's basically all the food that they sell there is from hot fried oil. Yes. Fabulous.
Fabulous. It's good. Not for every day. Of course.
You already have food tours in three cities, Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Rotterdam.
Do you have future plans for vegan food tours in Netherlands?
Yes, absolutely. In these three cities, we have guided tours. So they're always with a vegan guide. But we know, and we also get a lot of requests for smaller cities, but we know there's not enough tourists to do it guided, because it's more [00:22:00] expensive, of course. And you need to have full groups to be able to pay the guide as well. So we thought like, how can we still organize tours in smaller cities? And then we came up with the idea to develop self guidance tours through an app. Oh. So we are in a really exciting time at the moment. We got some subsidies to develop an app, and with this app yeah, we are going to build like an interactive tour that you can do by yourself, at your own time, at your own pace. And in this way we can offer vegan food tours in smaller cities as well. So we can still share the stories through video, through audio and also written stories, and yes, still send people to all these amazing places, and we want to extend that abroad as well. So we are, yeah. Oh wow. For now, we're just in the Netherlands, but we also wanna start with Belgium, for example, in Antwerp or Brussels. Start adding other cities in Europe as well. And the idea is that we want to have a [00:23:00] vegan ambassador in every city. A person who is from that city, who has experience with the vegan restaurants, who knows the stories, who know the food and the food scene as well. And we want them to develop the tour in our concept. So we know how to run a tour and how to design a tour, but they have the stories, so we want them to be an ambassador for their own tours.
And then of course, they will also take part of the revenue. The idea is that in the upcoming five years, we create all these tours in different cities with local ambassadors that aretaking you to their exciting and hidden gems and the places that you won't find with the ChatGTP or with a guidebook or whatever people use to get around. Yeah, that's really exciting.
That is very exciting. Will you come back on when you've got a few cities under your belt?
Yeah, I'd love to.
Okay. Daisy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was lovely to chat with you.
If people would like [00:24:00] to book and experience a tour with you, how would they do that?
So the easiest way is to just go to our website, www .vegan food tour. nl. So nl for the Netherlands. The website is in English as well. And there you can find all our tours. Also, what I would like to add, because, especially to American listeners, we get a lot ofvisitors from the US joining our tours, but they often book through websites like Tripadvisor or GetYourGuide. And I really want to ask them, don't do that because we have to pay so muchcommission to these companies. So actually, if we sell a ticket through Tripadvisor, we don't earn anything with it. Yeah. If you wanna book a tour, please do it directly with us, because then we also,yeah, get some money from it. So yeah, just that's the easiest way. If you want to follow us, we are on Instagram, vegan food tour nl, same for Facebook.
And we are also on TikTok. Not too active [00:25:00] yet. I'm still figuring it out, butit's also exciting to discover that. And that's also vegan food tour nl, right now.
Yeah. Fabulous. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me. It was nice sharing our stories.