Vegetarian Banquet

Danny's adviser, Lei Hao wanted to take us out to dinner so she found a vegetarian restaurant. We went with Lei, her husband, Juntai - who is also a physics professor at the observatory - and his postdoc, Joe. Juntai drove as we discussed how frightening it is driving in Shanghai. Apparently, it is better here than most other cities in China. Scary.

They knew I was a vegetarian so they took us to a vegetarian restaurant Lei had been to once before. It was a really beautiful restaurant inside of a really dumpy looking building. I am starting to discover that it is often the case in Shanghai that places, even very fancy ones, just don't typically bother to make the outside of buildings look nice.








It is pretty tough to find vegetarian foods in Chinese restaurants. There is a very different concept of what it means to be vegetarian here than at home. The other day at work they gave me shrimp as my vegetarian meal. I really don't understand the logic there.

If people do understand the concept of being vegetarian at all, they think of the Buddhist monk version of vegetarian. The monks are vegetarian because they aren't supposed to hurt living things. They also aren't supposed to take any pleasure in worldly things so vegetarian foods are supposed to be bland. They don't eat onion, garlic, ginger or anything else spicy. So at most restaurants when I say I want something vegetarian they either offer me fish and shrimp or they assume I want something without any flavor.

Anyway, the restaurant that Lei took us to was a vegetarian restaurant that made mock meat. Some of the food was so close to meat that you couldn't tell the difference. It was a really pretty place but it the food was a bit too close to meat for my comfort level. The platters looked really nice though. Each dish came in a unique serving piece and was beautifully displayed.