At Florence's instigation, her family and I went to a Vegetarian Restaurant in Taipei when I visited for Zhong Qui Jie. In English, the name of the restaurant was simply: "Every Green Vegetarian Restaurant." It was good that we ate healthy in the afternoon because that night while appreciating the the full moon we barbecued up a storm.
The Vegetarian Restaurant was big, it seats 300 to 400 people and we were there for the 2:30:M to 4PM session and there were at least 300 people. There are 3 sessions, one earlier about noon, and one later in the evening. I guess this allows the kitchen to prepare for each session. The food is served buffet style with as many trips to the buffet as you can make. I never thought I could get so full eating vegetarian food.
Below are some of the plates that our table put together, there were so many dishes(maybe 50) that we all tried small samples so that we could try as much as possible. About half of the dishes looked exactly as the nonvegetarian version but were made completely without the traditional meat/fish/eggs/ ... They looked so life like that it was the biggest kick to recognize the dish and then realized that it was made completely from tofu/mushrooms/... The sashimi looked so real and had the same consistency as fish so that with wasabi you might not be able to tell the difference. That was the question that was asked a lot: "If you didn't know this was a vegetarian restaurant, how would you know?"
As you can see from the dishes, the colors were intense. So much time must be spent in presentation that the colors come out. Of course, the ingredients have to be fresh.
Everyone seemed happy with the choice, after the initial rush everyone slowed down and went back to seconds, thirds, ... for the ones that they liked the best.
Egg roll, Yu Xiang Qiezi, dumplings, fried chicken, ...
Tuna sashimi
Bacon, fried rice, curried rice, chicken mcnuggets, more sashimi, grilled hot dogs with BBQ sauce, ...
More sashimi, ...
For fun, I brought up the the question of whether alcohol was vegetarian or not. Second sister-in-law, who is the most Buddhist of all, said the Dali Lama says some alcohol with a meal is OK for socializing. That's the thing about vegetarianism in Taiwan, it is more a Buddhist life style that something about the food itself. So Buddhism wants you to avoid foods that increases you desire like meat, fish, ... but also some other foods like garlic, onions, chives are on the list of foods to avoid. So when talking about "zhen zhende", i.e. true vegetarian, the Dali Lama is the authority because is definitely the authority on Buddhism.
It was quite an experience. I checked the web and there are actually some vegetarian restaurants in Tainan. I'll have to check them out.
The last few posting were a little irregular. I changed the time zone from Seattle to Taipei and at the same time started using the scheduled posting feature. Too many changes all at most causes problems. sorry
3 comments:
You found vegetarian heaven! Mike, thanks for writing about a vegetarian palace for one of your fans. It sounds like fun. Here, at home, we vegetarians (vegans)often talk about meals with mock meat vs. no mock meat. This isn't in the Buddhist tradition, of course. I don't think it is necessary to take a stand one way or another. I just aim to eat well balanced meals. I enjoy mock meat (like Tofurky) now and then, but don't feel deprived if I don't have anything that looks like meat. Is tofu in Taiwan as wonderful as tofu in Japan? Do Taiwanese ever eat nut butters? Are nuts eaten very much?
Finally, we have Vegetarian food as the subject. vegetarian food actually is not uncommon in Buddhist countries. I know even the temple serve vegetarian food. I am glad Paula is happy now.
There are more and more people like vegetarian now. Some school and government even encourage "Eat heatlh on Monday" and have them eat vegetable on Monday. There are also some organic restaurants in Taipei, maybe we can try next time, they normally have good food too.
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