Gourmet Vegetarian Restaurant

It’s hard to come by a Chinese restaurant who has their website readily available for you to pursue their menu to see what is available to eat.  Gourmet Vegetarian Restaurant is a friendly and high quality vegetarian Chinese restaurant.  They serve mock meats, mock seafood, vegetables, noodles, and rice served in authentic Chinese-style dishes.  Not much to say in particular since everything is good.  No complaints at all.  I would return here again for good quality vegetarian meals.

I liked how they have a television on during dinner that shows you how to make vegetarian meals.  It rotates through 2-3 minute video of how-to-recipes while you eat.  The servers are very pleasant and friendly.  They made sure to ask you if you want eggs in your meal or not; in order to make sure that not only are they considerate of vegetarian eating but vegan eating as well.

Veggie Shrimp in Thousand Island Sauce. $12.99

I love this dish that they have.  The veggie shrimp tastes so good with the thousand island sauce.  It is crisp but soft and leaves a bounce when you chew it, making it taste like real shrimp.

Fried Udon with Shredded Veggie Chicken in Fermented Bean Paste. $9.99

The shredded veggie chicken was amazing here.  So well done and tasted delicious!  Also, there were a generous number of them within the udon.  That is so rare in  Chinese restaurants and also much appreciated (veggie chicken of this sort is quite expensive when you buy it at the supermarket)!  The portion of the udon was so big that we had enough for leftovers for the next day.  The noodles tasted even better the next day.  [First post written on September 24, 2013.]

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Yesterday (October 19th) was the 15th day of the month of the lunar calendar, so my mom and I visited Gourmet Vegetarian Restaurant for some lunch and dim sum.  I’ve been to this restaurant a couple of times now after a friend brought me here for dinner over the summer.  I was happy with their large portions of food as well as the quality of food.

Here’s what we ordered during lunch from their dim sum sheet.

Assorted gluten & bean curd. $7.50

This is a staple dish to order at a Chinese vegetarian restaurant.  This plate usually contains a bit of each of the gluten that make.  There is almost always a red sweet and sour one, a curry one, and a crispy fried one.  The rest varies in between depending on what “mock” meat they want to make.  This dish was really well prepared at this restaurant.  Their mock “cha siu” (BBQ pork) tasted almost like the real thing!  They had a mock beef shank too that tasted really like the real thing.  We were very impressed with how many varieties there were in this staple dish. (They sell it in small, medium, and large, and even have party tray versions.  The one pictured here is the medium size.)

Deep Fried Curry Dumplings. $2

These were deep fried well.  They were light and crunchy.  The bit of curry that was inside wasn’t spicy.  They were really good and almost addictive like chips; once you eat one, you just can’t stop!

Steamed Mock Shrimp Dumplings. $2.80

This is such a dim sum favourite.  Ha Gow and Sui Mai, anyone?   This is Ha Gow (literally “shrimp wrap”.)  The skin of the dumpling was soft and chewy; just the way I like it. The mock shrimp inside the dumpling was chewy and tasted like the texture of real shrimp.

Spicy Noodle Soup in Sichuan Soup. $5.50
(also known as “dam dam noodles”)

The noodles here were really yummy and not heavy.  The little sprinkle of spicy pickled vegetable on the top of the noodles made the bowl of noodles very flavourful. If you’re allergic to nuts, don’t order this dish since “dam dam noodles” almost always contain peanuts as part of its sauce.

Veggie meat with noodle in black pepper soup. $6

Delicious!  I loved how this dish had pickled vegetables in it.  It made the flavour of the soup a little sour which opened up your appetite.  The mock duck pieces were made very alike to the real thing.  The noodles were soft and slurpable!

Bean curd sheet wrapped with 4 vegetables. $2.50

Yum!  This was also very good.  The vegetables inside the bean curd sheet were bok choy and some other vegetables that tied in the whole wrap together very nicely.  Lol, I don’t remember what the other vegetables were.  All I remember is this was delicious too!

We also ordered a housemade dessert that they have to go:  An almond paste soup dessert.  It was very thick in almond paste.

Overall, this restaurant is extremely good.  There were tons of customers when we were there for lunch on a Saturday, and I know they’ll always expect more customers since the food is just too good.  I’ll also continue to post more pictures of the food when I return to dine here in the future. 🙂

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January 1, 2018:  On January 1, we headed here for vegetarian dim sum.  I thought this was my first time having dim sum here, but skimming my above blog post denotes that I actually had been here previously.

On this visit, we were a table of seven and ordered a number of dim sum to share.  I really liked the assorted gluten.  Still the best vegetarian dim sum dish hands down.

The rest of the other dim sum were good to average.  This place definitely doesn’t serve the fanciest or most unique dim sum in vegetarian form (unlike Wutai) but the meal was good.  I especially liked the vegetarian siu mai.  The congee was good too.  The dessert to me was a bit bland.