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Buddhist Chinese restaurant

4 Posted on 12 / 31 / 2012

This restaurant is located on the Ci'en West Rd (慈恩西路) which is on the right, if you're walking along Xiao Zhai East Road towards the Big Wild Goose Pagoda from the direction of the Shaanxi History Museum. Once on the right road, walk along the road towards south a couple hundred meters, and the restaurant is on the right side. There is a big dining room with big glass windows and also an attached tea house.

The food was ok and the ambiance nice. Menu is very long and has pictures. I'd recommend this place, especially because it's situated conveniently near big tourist attractions, such as the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.

Pros: good food

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Good experience

4 Posted on 05 / 16 / 2012

In case my update doesn't go through, please note that the location shows up incorrectly on the map. It should be between the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Shaanxi History Museum (comfortable walking distance from either). If you do a google maps search for "Tianlong Baoyan Vegetarian Restaurant, Xi'an" it'll show up in the right place.

This is a sister restaurant of Daxingshan Temple, and they in fact share many of the same menu items, though this restaurant is more expensive.

Big menu, friendly staff (when I was there, at least). As far as I can tell, everything is vegan. It's not that cheap, especially after eating at the cheaper sister restaurant, but you can eat a very satisfying meal for vert little money, depending on what you order. I had soup, a huge order of dumplings, steamed buns, and bean cake for dessert (the only thing I wasn't crazy about) for under $10.

It's a little tricky to find if you don't know what to look for, as there's no English writing. There are big red lanterns hanging outside, and a huge stylized drawing of a man right inside the entrance. It's located on the west side of the street.

Pros: Big servings, Nice atmosphere
Cons: A little tricky to find, Not super cheap

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Meh

3 Posted on 09 / 09 / 2009

This restaurant was okay. The staff did not speak much English at all and seemed annoyed by our very presences. We definitely had language barrier problems. We ordered skewered mock meat, a spicy chicken dish, mushroom noodle soup, and a mixed mock meat plate to go. The skewered mock meat was delicious, though strangely it was presented in a pool of salt. The salt was really excessive, wasteful, and unnecessary. The spicy chicken dish was excellent. We had issues with the soup, as we ordered one bowl and it took a very long time to come out. When it didn't come out within 30 minutes of the other dishes, we figured they may have forgotten, so we ordered another. The waiter tried to explain to us in Mandarin, apparently, that our order was pending. However, I believe we made clear that we only wanted one order. He put two in anyway. When the second one came out 30 minutes after the first (we were done eating by then), we asked that he take it back. He seemed to understand, but then he took it back and charged us for it anyway. We disputed the charge. It wasn't that expensive, but we didn't want to pay for the soup especially after he had taken it back; it would have been a different story if he had wrapped it up for us to take away. Also, the mock meat plate was our most expensive order and it was horribly disappointing. By the end of the night, our waiter seemed absolutely sick of us. Overall, a meh experience.