Every dish is potentially vegetarian.
Cucumber and spring onion pancakes…
High end vegetarian: Michelin Star 4 years in a row.
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I was just looking at this place! Seems to tick all the boxes. Not badly priced at all. 
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From the Michelin description:
No garlic or onion is used in any dish.
So not just vegetarian, but adhering to some Buddhist codes.
How do they do it?
Guy
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Nothing more personal, and difficult, than recommending a restaurant, but besides myself, I know several well ‘spoiled’ people who walked out there very happy.
I was also going to recommend here. But yeah it is kind of Western.
The weekend buffet here is nearly exquisite.
Probably always good.
The Okura Prestige Taipei
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The Sheraton Hotel restaurants are quite popular with Taiwanese and it’s like a go-to place. Has been for a long time.
Antoine Room definitely upscale I mean they even have a harp player
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I chuckled a bit seeing vegetarian meat balls and vegetarian chicken on the menu.
The OP requested no western food.
Guy
Yeah, agree, they should not do that.
In general, restaurants here don’t have ‘good’ vegetarian options. They’re typically just making a ‘vegetarian’ option because the rest of the group dining are eating meat. I suggest you choose a 100% vegetarian restaurant for the meal. How about Fruitful Food Taipei Mingyao Branch - Google Maps?
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Not super fancy atmosphere or crazy expensive, but quite high quality food and very nice and comfy. Kid friendly.
How old are the kids? Some fine dining spots have age restrictions.
edit. damnit, sorry. just noticed the no western food. they are quite western
my bad. leaving it for reference anyway.
There are some pretty spectacular hot pot places around, which are probably the easiest meals to do veggie and meat with the same group.
Take a look at the Shin Yeh Restaurants and the Shin Yeh Signature Restaurant. Maybe one of their restaurants is in a good location for you. Would fit the bill of high-end and excellent food.
Seconding this (source: spouse is vegetarian, I’m not). I’ve found that to get high-end vegetarian food here, in many cases you need to go to a high-end vegetarian restaurant. The only exception that immediately comes to mind is the already-recommended Joseph’s Bistro (summer menu here), but even there vegetarian can be a bit of a pain, since you’ll likely want to share dishes.
Note that the sharing of dishes in lots of Asian cuisine makes eating out a little annoying for vegetarians (and others at the table!), since it throws the balance of dishes off, plus it means all the vegetable dishes need to be cooked differently (without shrimp or pork or broth or whatever).
Probably the best of the vegetarian restaurants I’ve been to is Yu Shan Ge / 鈺善閣 (here), Japanese kaiseki style (from Buddhist monastery traditions, maybe? I forget). My wife loved it, and I enjoyed it, partly because of how different it was from things I’d eaten before. Near Shandao Temple Station, so close to Taipei Main Station.
But to be somewhat utilitarian about it, it depends how much you care about getting high-end vegetarian food, versus high-end food for most and satisfactory vegetarian options for one or two of the group. If I’m taking my visiting parents out for a nice dinner, then I just make sure the restaurant has vegetarian options to keep my wife content. If I’m deliberately taking my wife out for a nice (Asian) dinner, then we usually go to a vegetarian restaurant.
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If you don’t mind trying some fancy vegetarian food, there’s this really high end vegetarian restaurant called 鈺膳閣 near Shandao temple station.
Like most high end places, it’s better to make reservations.
I see @lostinasia beat me to it
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If you’re going that route, why not just go to Din Tai Feng? They are both chains, which seems to be something the OP wishes to avoid.
Guy
Technically Yu Shan Ge is also a chain, since there’s also one in Kaohsiung, but there is only one in Taipei.
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I saw 2 Taiwanese restaurants serving high end Taiwanese cuisine on youtube before, but never gotten around to trying them. If you want to sample local dishes, and not Japanese, Cantonese, Shanghai, fusion or whatever style from elsewhere, you might give them a try as well. Of course, there’s always Shin Ye which is mentioned already.
Zhenzhu (真珠) is right across the train station in side Q square (京站), which you can get to from the underground markets.
Shan Hai Lou (山海樓) is on Renai rd. between Zhongxiau xingseng and Dongmen stations, might be a little farther than “close to Taipei station”.
Thanks for the suggestions! I ended up going for Serenity, the slightly high-end veggie restaurant. This page will be a good resource for future outings.
The reason I didn’t specify that I wanted a vegetarian restaurant as a necessity was because I assumed that non-vegetarian restaurants would have good vegetarian options. Was surprised to find that even the very expensive restaurants in Taipei don’t necessarily have good vegetarian options! Considering how good and how common I remember vegetarian buffets in Taiwan to be, I really wasn’t expecting that!
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