Best Vegetarian Restaurants in Shanghai

Vegetarianism has in recent years become popular as a lifestyle choice around the globe. As a result, nowadays many travelers choose to seek out restaurants, which conform to their dietary requirements at the various destinations they travel to.

Vegetarianism is now popular as a lifestyle choice in many parts of China, where once vegetarian food was only available in Buddhist temples. Today, Shanghai is home to more than twenty vegetarian eateries catering to all price points and offering innovative menus, which don’t include only mock-meat versions of their non-vegetarian counterparts. With so many options available, vegetarian travelers now needn’t dread business or leisure trips to the People’s Republic of China.

Listed below are some popular and well-regarded vegetarian restaurants in Shanghai: -

Fu He Hui
The restaurant Fu He Hui occupies an expansive area, extending over three floors of a building situated at the junction of Shanghai’s Changning and Jing’an Districts.

Sparsely but tastefully adorned with fine antiques and trimmings, the restaurant is a tranquil space. Housing a number of private dining rooms that can accommodate groups of 4-12 diners, Fu He Hai also has large dining chamber capable of seating a large group of 18 diners at a grand custom-built marble table.

The restaurant’s menu offers a modern interpretation of Chinese cuisine, prepared with mainly locally sourced, seasonal, quality ingredients like pomelo, wild vegetables, buckwheat noodles, quail egg, truffles, mushrooms, gingko, yam and other root vegetables and more. The dishes offered resemble artistic creations and taste as good as they look. Fu He Hui presently offers only three prix-fixe menus.

Godly

Godly is an established chain of vegetarian restaurants that has long reigned on the city’s culinary landscape. The menu at Godly features vegetarian forms of well-known Chinese dishes like Shark’s Fin and BBQ pork. Mock-meat (made with wheat gluten), seaweed, mushrooms and tofu form the base for many of the dishes offered at the different Godly restaurants around the city.

Sprout Café
The Sprout café is housed within the Sprout health food store at Eco Village, Shanghai’s good food and living destination. This bright, cheery and airy café offers a rotating, seasonal menu, which features several wholesome vegetarian and vegan dishes hailing from a variety of popular cuisines. The café offers Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Singaporean and Thai dishes. The café uses no dairy products in its various preparations and the menu also features gluten-free items. Diners at Sprout Café can choose to dine in-house or pick up food to go.

Wujie
Wujie overlooking Xujiahui is yet another upmarket vegetarian eatery in Shanghai. Housed in an ancient building that dates back to over a century, the restaurant spans six floors. Each floor of the restaurant represents an essential element and is adorned accordingly. While the first floor represents water, the upper floors represent wood, fire, earth and gold respectively. The top most floor of the restaurant hosts an elegant teahouse and a rock garden. Wujie serves up Asian fusion fare crafted from the best, locally sourced ingredients. In addition, the restaurant also ensures that the produce it uses has been produced via sustainable methods without any use of chemical fertilizers. It is no wonder then that the restaurant is also known by a second moniker i.e. Greenology. Wujie has in recent times expanded to include a second eatery on the Bund and another in Shanghai’s snazzy SWFC (Shanghai World Financial Center).

Zao Zi Shu
Zao Zi Shu whose name translates as Jujube tree from Mandarin is yet another well-regarded vegetarian restaurant chain in Shanghai. The chain operates several outlets in Shanghai and has branches in areas like Huaihai, Gubei and Jiangning. All three outlets follow the chain’s healthy living philosophy rigidly and offer no wine, meat or eggs in their premises. They also insist on a smoke-free environment.

As for the food, the menus at the Zao Zi Shu restaurants feature vegetarian interpretations of Chinese fare. Dishes like Honey Stewed Pork, Chili Fish, Seafood Tofu and more features on the menu but are entirely vegetarian for their main ingredients are vegetarian and include items like tofu, gingko, wheat gluten, bamboo shoots etc.