About Vegetarian Food in China

Hi! Miriam. Your website is very helpful. I'm planning a trip to Beijing and Shanghai for my family next month. I would appreciate if you could give more information on family friendly restaurants, where to get Muslim or Vegetarian food in both cities. Thanks so much.

Sri from Malaysia



Vegetarian restaurants in both Beijing and Shanghai are becoming more popular. Shanghai being more of an "international city" will have the most options. It is hard to recommend specific restaurants because it will depend on the areas where you will be, both cities are spread out, you might find yourself traveling for an hour before you can reach a specific restaurant.

What I can recommend is taking a look at the "Happy Cow" website, which lists several options, you can look them up on the interactive map, and they also have reviews where other people comment on the restaurant. Here are the links:

www.happycow.net/asia/china/beijing/index.html

www.happycow.net/asia/china/shanghai/index.html

As far as "family firendly" all restaurants in China are family friendly and love kids, this is not a problem.

To be honest, we never really purposely looked for a vegetarian restaurant, we just found ourselves eating in the area we happened to be, instead of looking for specific restaurants. If the restaurant passed the "people test" (full of patrons which would assure freshest food) then that’s where we headed to.

Chinese food is generally very "veggie-friendly", but that being said, "vegetarianism" per se is not that common. You will find that many Chinese that call themselves "vegetarians" also eat fish and dairy products. Also, the vegetables might be cooked in lard. So when eating at a "regular" restaurant you are better off having your veggies steamed or boiled.

Have a wonderful trip, let us know how your trip went and specially how you got along with the food!