By Xiao Chen (Shanghai Star)
Updated: 2006-04-30 14:26

Even if you do not eat chicken feet, you might at the Gongdelin Vegetarian Restaurant. The dish looks exactly like chicken feet and tastes like chicken feet, but it is made of konjac, a nutritious plant high in soluble fibre, but low in carbohydrates.

This is just one of the several interesting cold dishes we ordered and the beginning of an eye opening experience for me and my four expat friends from Britain, France, Germany and Australia-two of them vegetarians.

The "crab meat" is served in a beautiful crab-shaped pottery plate. The meat is golden and a bit golden brown, it looks as tempting as the renowned hairy crabs in Shanghai every autumn. The magic is the flavour. It satisfies your taste buds just like the real thing. Of course, only non-vegetarian carnivores can tell.

This dish does not come easy. It takes a lot of engineering from mashed potato and carrot as well as minced bamboo shoots, ginger and green onions, plus vinegar and cooking wine.

Now comes the abalone with broccoli. The presentation is great, sliced light brown abalone surrounded by fresh green broccoli. Again, the mock seafood looks real. Its texture is as chewable as the real abalone, smooth and a bit on the tender side. Made primarily from mushrooms, its flavour is enhanced by soy sauce and a vegetarian oyster sauce.

The pine nut and pigeon meat is also a good choice. A pigeon eater (I am sorry), I would not say it tastes exactly like the flying bird, but the whole dish is very tasty.

You could not go to Gongdelin without ordering a whole fish, a fish that has two eyes staring at you. We ordered a duobao fish in sweet and sour sauce, instead of the usual pseudo-yellow croaker I would usually order on my previous visits 10 years ago. The waitress suggested the duobao fish is tastier. Of course, at 85 yuan (US$ 10), it also costs 20 yuan (US$ 2) more than croaker.

Gongdelin is definitely the place to go if you want to treat your friends to an exciting vegetarian experience. Every dish is simply an artistic creation and there are some 200 on the menu, including all the faux beef, salmon, pork, chicken and seafood you can eat. You would not find any of these in the new vegetarian restaurants in town.

Gongdelin was opened about 80 years ago by Buddhist follower Zhao Yunshao, originally from a temple in Hangzhou of neighbouring Zhejiang Province.

Service at Gongdelin has improved dramatically from my earlier visits to this State-owned eatery. Waitresses are attentive and ready to explain the ingredients involved to make artistic mock meat and seafood, but they could not very well tell why vegetarians or monks like the imaginary non-vegetarian presentation. What is really in their minds?

What I can tell is that two of my vegetarian friends both have greatly enjoyed the food there. We ordered about five cold dishes and five hot dishes. It cost us 380 yuan, or about US$47.

Location: No. 445, Nanjing Xilu (between Huangpilu and Chengdulu)
Opening time: Lunch: 11 am-2 pm daily; Dinner: 5 pm-9 pm daily
Tel: 021-63270218