• 4
• A lifesaver

First things first: the location of the restaurant according to both Google and Baidu is misleading. It is not in any backstreet or cul de sac. It is on the big main road, Yan'an Lu, at the end of a row of shops near the junction with Hefang Street and Gaoyin Street. The shop front characters are stylised enough to be illegible to non-natives, and a large stand saying "VEGETARIAN" is conveniently hidden behind a pillar. The first floor and entrance to the restaurant looks like a bookshop too. But the food was almost worth the two days it took me to find the place. Inside, the decor is typical bourgeois Buddhist minimalism yet still cosy, and the staff were friendly and accommodating of my limited Chinese. The menu is extensive, and almost all the dishes were concoctions of a number of different ingredients e.g various permutations of tofu and vegetables. There was a lot of fake meat dishes, and even something that looked like malashanguo. I had their special noodles and some kind of mushroom/fake chicken dish and both were far from bland (as another review here has claimed) if a little oily. Tea was free, which was a bonus. It is a proper restaurant, not a Buddhist buffet, and so dining alone will be appropriately pricey. But two carefully selected dishes should provide a well-rounded meal for around 50-60rmb and be enough to stop a grown adult going hungry for a good while.