Vegetarian food in Taiwan

I can not provide you details for Xinzhu, but overall being vegetarian myself, I can tell you that you will not die of hunger here. There are plenty of buddhist vegetarian restaurants and corner eateries everywhere, serving buddhist bean-curd meat fakes, fried rice or other chinese dishes. Do not expect regular restaurants to have vegetarian food like in the west. When traveling outside of Kaohsiung I often have problems to find something to eat, because you either have to find a vegetarian restaurant or go through several restaurants and check if they have a veg. dish. Most of regular restaurants are also not willing to prepare one for you (even if it simply means to leave the meat out from a dish).

If you like western or Japanese food, you can forget most of the restaurants. Mostly you will get some watery noodle with no taste, say good bye to veg. sushi. There are however several good restaurants that do have veg. food (Smokey Joe’s in Kaohsiung for example).

Many “vegetable dishes” or snacks, which would be meat-free in the west, have chicken powder or other meat ingredients in Taiwan, because “it tastes better”. The first thing you want to learn here are the chinese characters for all kinds of meat because most products have chinese only ingredient listings. Look for the sauvastika (reverse swastika) symbol on restaurants and food products (=buddhist vegetarian)

Costco has vegetarian burgers that do not taste like meat and also other vegetarian products… so if you are fed up eating bean-curd-meat-fakes, it is the place to go.

Avoid French fries from places like McDonalds & co, they are using animal oil, or at least blended oil (I thought they were not supposed to do that worldwide anymore, but that’s what one manager at McDonalds here told us). Oh, say good bye to vegetarian burgers. If you are dying of hunger, 7-11 has one type of cold noodles that are (non-buddhist) vegetarian.

Overall people seem to look down vegetarians in Taiwan and have no problems with showing it, so better get used to that.

…and in case you end up being in Kaohsiung, do not try to go jogging here… except you have one of those Respro breathing masks :wink:

My experience differs from that of lime*monkey. I didn’t have a great deal of experience of vegetarian food in Taiwan until my Mum came to visit and we went on a motorbike tour round north Taiwan. I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to find enough for her to eat, so I packed some tubs of vegetarian instant noodles just in case. We managed to eat well everywhere, and the instant noodles travelled all around north Taiwan with us and back to my house, where I ate them myself about two weeks later.

[quote=“lime*monkey”]When traveling outside of Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong) I often have problems to find something to eat, because you either have to find a vegetarian restaurant or go through several restaurants and check if they have a veg. dish. Most of regular restaurants are also not willing to prepare one for you (even if it simply means to leave the meat out from a dish)…Overall people seem to look down vegetarians in Taiwan and have no problems with showing it, so better get used to that.[/quote]I was surprised at these comments. Restaurant staff everywhere we went were very happy to point out vegetarian menu items for us, and if none existed, to cook them specially. One of several examples of this was the Hakka restaurant we went to in Nanzhuang. Now, Hakka food generally is pretty meaty: pigs’ trotters, intestines etc. But the owner promised that she would do what she could for us, and a little while later laid out some very reasonable food for us: a soup and a couple of vegetable dishes. She apologised to us that they had no experience of cooking vegetarian food and that probably what they had cooked for us wasn’t very good. I told her that, on the contrary, it was excellent and I thanked her for her trouble.

And as for this idea that Taiwanese do not respect vegetarians, I would say that the opposite is true in my experience and that a vegetarian westerner is not only seen as something of a novelty but is also given a certain amount of respect. I think this comes from the general respect which is accorded to Buddhism (note that I am not stating that the general population has a great knowledge of Buddhism, but that many people have a feeling of respect for it).

[quote=“lime*monkey”]If you like western or Japanese food, you can forget most of the restaurants. Mostly you will get some watery noodle with no taste, say good bye to veg. sushi. There are however several good restaurants that do have veg. food (Smokey Joe’s in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong) for example).

Costco has vegetarian burgers that do not taste like meat and also other vegetarian products… so if you are fed up eating bean-curd-meat-fakes, it is the place to go.[/quote]7-11 has a number of things that are OK for vegetarians.

It is a fair point about the relative lack of western style vegetarian food (although my mother was amazed at the 100-plus Chinese-style dishes at a big vegetarian buffet restaurant we went to- certainly much, much more than ‘bean-curd-meat-fakes’). In Taichung there’s only one vegetarian western-style restaurant, although most, perhaps all of the other western restaurants have vegetarian items on their menus. Don’t know about Hsinchu but imagine it’s similar.

[quote=“lime*monkey”]Many “vegetable dishes” or snacks, which would be meat-free in the west, have chicken powder or other meat ingredients in Taiwan, because “it tastes better”. The first thing you want to learn here are the Chinese characters for all kinds of meat because most products have Chinese only ingredient listings. Look for the sauvastika (reverse swastika) symbol on restaurants and food products (=buddhist vegetarian)[/quote]Yes, if something has this symbol then it will be completely free of animal products. But in general, if you say you are vegetarian then I think people will check and make sure that a dish has no animal products for you. Where confusion can arise is concerning ‘degrees’ of vegetarianism, for example if you eat eggs, cheese and even fish but no meat, or just no red meat. I think that the differing grades of vegetarianism prevalent in the west are not so common here- basically it’s all animal products or none, with the possible exception of eggs.

One last small point- Xpet was correct that Chinese Buddhists don’t eat onions (this includes all members of the onion family such as scallions and garlic), but I think he was incorrect concerning chili. I think chili is OK.

Funny how experiences can differ. As a full time vegetarian, I have never realized how much it sucks being vegetarian until coming to Taiwan, where half of the people are vegetarian - and I have been staying in quite many places around the globe.

Your experiences are based on a foreigner bonus during a few weeks(?) trip around Taiwan with your mother. While I could agree with some of your points, I can not accept they way how you wrote your message. I am married to a taiwanese and we have taiwanese vegetarian friends and I would not have posted my views as harsh as I did if they were not backed up by their views on this. Religious people (=vegetarians) get looked down by non religious and vice versa, daily ritual in Taiwan. Non religious vegetarians suffer. I have never been accidentally eating so much meat as in Taiwan, because of pure ignorance of the waitresses and cooks.

Try to be vegetarian for one month, you will give it up quickly.

As for 7-11. Yeah, I forgot the soy eggs, the sweet corn on the stick, the rice pocket and the one type-hidden-somewhere instant noodles… plus Pringles. Sorry about that.

As a clarification, learning the chinese characters for meat is important for your daily food shopping in the supermarket, because not all people want to eat out everyday. And the fun at the supermarket starts with finding out which ONE package of the fifty other packages of Dumplings is vegetarian (it’s the yellow one with “vegetable dumplings” on it… not the other “vegetable” dumplings) …

Definitely.

I learned about the “non-vegetarian” onions when I was eating sour cream & onion Pringles and my girlfriend’s sister became a bit upset about it (probably because I said I’d only stop eating if she showed me an onion-animal). Next day, she bought me a lot of “truly vegetarian” snacks. :smiley:

As far as I know, availability of vegetarian food depends a lot on where you are in Taiwan. I had no problems at all in Taichung (they even have at least one vegetarian supermarket there) and in Taipei. IMHO, Taichung is the best place in the world for vegetarians (haven’t spent much time in Taipei, so I don’t know if it’s even better). On the other hand, it proved difficult to find suitable restaurants in some places on the east coast and in the south. Sometimes, it reminded me of mainland China where restaurant staff often don’t understand the concept of being a vegetarian and if you try to explain what it means by listing animals you don’t eat, they’ll find some exotic species you failed to mention and mix it with your veggies. :s
I don’t know about Xinzhu, but considering the location it should be ok.

BTW, here’s a page with a nice video from Xinzhu:
city2.johosuido.ne.jp/wvcon/ … chu_en.htm
You have to copy the entire line above and then remove the automatically added " (Xinzhu)" for the URL to work.
Hmm, wind-dried rice noodles! :slight_smile:

[quote=“hypermegaglobal”]As far as I know, availability of vegetarian food depends a lot on where you are in Taiwan. I had no problems at all in Taichung (Taizhong) (they even have at least one vegetarian supermarket there) and in Taipei. IMHO, Taichung (Taizhong) is the best place in the world for vegetarians (haven’t spent much time in Taipei, so I don’t know if it’s even better). On the other hand, it proved difficult to find suitable restaurants in some places on the east coast and in the south…
I don’t know about Xinzhu, but considering the location it should be ok.[/quote]
Maybe that’s it: that there’s quite a difference between north/central, and south. I was surprised by lime*monkey’s comments and felt that it was worth writing about an alternative experience.

I certainly didn’t mean to criticise him and I accept that he has much more experience of vegetarianism than I have.

Joe:

The vegetarian buffet (chain restaurants) in Taizhong you mentioned is called Saint Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant 聖華宮

taiwanfun.com/league/html/sgp23.htm

You’ll find the addresses of the 3 locations from the link above, before going there I thought the veg dishes would be bland, but the visit changed my perception completely, it’ll be worth the trip going there even if you live out of town.

I spoke to a vegetarian person from the Middle East and he said that the pots and pans used for cooking vegetarian food much never touch meat or animal flesh of any kind . . . . . He also pointed out a number of other foods that are forbidden for vegetarians to eat, including eggs, all kinds of seafood, certain types of spices, etc.

After talking to him in some detail, it occurs to me that what the above posters in this thread have discussed as being “vegetarian” is not strictly correct . . . . . . so I am just wondering if you are aware that what you are speaking of are “modified vegetarian” diets, and not strictly vegetarian ones . . . . .

Or perhaps someone can define exactly what the term “vegetarian diet” includes, and what it doesn’t???

Thanks for asking. I am a “western vegetarian”, aka Ovo-Lacto vegetarian, or simply “vegetarian” if you ask me this in Europe or US. This is the most common form of vegetarianism in the west. I do eat milk products, products including eggs and all spices that do not contain animal ingredients (and I do love onions and garlic). I do try to avoid eating eggs and I also avoid gelatine and medicaments containing animal ingredients. My pans do not touch meat or animal flesh of any kind… except for the eggs, if you count them in to “flesh of any kind”.
(I am very sure the pans in the restaurants here, except for veg. ones, do touch flesh of any kind before preparing my food… but… eat or stay hungry :idunno:).

Lacto-vegetarians do not eat eggs, do eat milk products.

Strict vegetarians, aka Vegans, do not eat or use animal products.

Everything else is a “modified vegetarian” diet …from my point of view.
More info on that: http://www.ivu.org/faq/definitions.html

It is ok to eat any kind of spices (that do not contain animal products), onions and garlic for all of the above mentioned diets.

In Taiwan there are the Buddhist/Taoist vegetarians, who also do not eat all kinds of onions, garlic and some other vegetables. Eggs, Milk etc are fine to eat for Taoists, not sure about Buddhists.

Now we have the Middle-Eastern vegetarians, who do not eat eggs and certain spices, and I am sure Indian vegetarians have their own rules too…
I guess every culture or religious group has their own understanding of what is vegetarian and what not. Since I am from Europe (and veg. for non-religious reasons), I chose the Ovo-Lacto vegetarian diet, tending to Lacto vegetarianism.

p.s. Animal or animal products, in my eyes also includes all kinds of seafood, bugs, cocroaches and anything else chinese might consider eating that was alive before. I have met few pseudo-vegetarians who considered them self vegetarian but ate fish and seafood. I guess their goodwill should count. :idunno:

[quote=“vincewy”]Joe:

The vegetarian buffet (chain restaurants) in Taizhong you mentioned is called Saint Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant 聖華宮

taiwanfun.com/league/html/sgp23.htm

You’ll find the addresses of the 3 locations from the link above, before going there I thought the veg dishes would be bland, but the visit changed my perception completely, it’ll be worth the trip going there even if you live out of town.[/quote]Cheers Vince, yes the one I went to was good and had a great variety of dishes. In pinyin the name is Shenghuagong.

I’m a vegetarian, I’ve been here two years and I’ve had no problems what so ever finding vegetarian food. Usually I eat in vegetarian restaurants, but if one cannot be found other places are more than happy to make something vegetarian (and thanks to Buddhism people here understand the concept, unlike in some parts of Europe).

As for different locations in Taiwan, I live in Taipei, but I have travelled around the island quite a bit and as I said I have had no problems.

Lime monkey, in my 5 years as a veggie in Taipei, I’ve always encountered suprising respect for this form the Taiwanese. I think you’re way off in the assumption abotu vegetarians being looked down upon. I even find it odd, that people always assume I must be a nice person just because I’m vegetarian. Back in NZ I’d get a lot of hostility from people for being vegetarian - they’d assume I thought I was superior to them, or they’d think I was a traitor to NZ’s meat industry or something.

As for non-veggie restaurants not having veggie otpions - well this is true of certain types of restaurant such as your typical noodle-shop or biandang restaurant who only have one dish or a few variations. It is also true of most chain restaurants, but most restaraunts I’ve been to that offer a range of dishes have always either had a vegetarian option, or been able to whip something up.

Brian

Half the people in Taiwan are vegetarians? That’s news to me.

People are vegetarians in funny ways in the ROC. For example, many people - after a life time of snarfing down beef and pork, turn to vegetarianism in their twilight years, to atone for all the animals they have eaten - working off the bad karma. A lot of these veggies are only veggie for breakfast, or only veggie for dinner, or one week a month. Then there are the large number of people who only eat two veggie meals a month, on the 1st and 15th day of the lunar calander. If you are ever sitting in your favorite veggie place and suddenly it’s packed one day, you’ll find that it’s either lunar 1 or 15, or there is some big bai-bai happening that day.

I’ve been a vegetarian (without any relapse, or occasional meat eating) for 28 years. I found it fairly easy to get by in Taiwan.

Veggie cafeterias are always easy to find no matter what part of town you are in - once you learn to recognize the two characters for vegetarian, and to recognize that buddhist swastikas often lead the way to veggie grub. The only problem is, compared to meat restaurants, the operating hours of veggie places tend to be very limited (12-1:30, and 5-6:30). Another problem is - how long can you stomach the oily, soggy, sometimes cold, and often unhygenically prepared food in those places. I burned out on them in about 3 years. After that it became a bit harder for me, until places like Subway came to save the day, and supermarkets started stocking a bigger vareity of Western foodstuffs.

There are a few really good veggie cafeterias around town, so they kept me going too, and occasionally I’d go to a more formal veggie restaurant.

I never developed the habit of going to local meat restaurants and asking them to prepare something special for me, but after a while you learn that there are lots of dishes that I would consider veggie, because I eat garlic and eggs (on occasion), that are available all over the place, that Taiwanese wouldn’t consider veggie.

I had similar experiences to Brian, while I was in Taiwan, in terms of people’s attitude towards my diet. Mostly they thaught it interesting that I was able to give up meat at such a youg age. And you’d here sort of dumbass, but innocent enough observations like “ni kan, waigworen ye tse su

The only problem I ever had was with one ex-girlfirend who tried to get me to give up being veggie because she thought it would make it much easier for us to socialize with her friends (and we all know the role eating plays in Taiwanese social life) and for her to have me around her place for dinners with her family. Much to her chagrin, I didn’t budge, and in the end we didn’t go out to eat that often with her mates, but her Mom seemed happy enough to prepare some really tasty veggie stuff for me whenever I went over to eat.

merge

[quote=“joesax”][quote=“vincewy”]Joe:

The vegetarian buffet (chain restaurants) in Taizhong you mentioned is called Saint Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant 聖華宮

taiwanfun.com/league/html/sgp23.htm

You’ll find the addresses of the 3 locations from the link above, before going there I thought the veg dishes would be bland, but the visit changed my perception completely, it’ll be worth the trip going there even if you live out of town.[/quote]Cheers Vince, yes the one I went to was good and had a great variety of dishes. In pinyin the name is Shenghuagong.[/quote]

Followed the link, the page is a blank one now.

Could you scan the name cards?

Thank you, :)!

[quote=“mwalimu”][quote=“lime*monkey”] Another problem is - how long can you stomach the oily, soggy, sometimes cold, and often unhygenically prepared food in those places. I burned out on them in about 3 years. After that it became a bit harder for me, until places like Subway came to save the day, and supermarkets started stocking a bigger vareity of Western foodstuffs.

[/quote]

Well put!

[ I burned out after 8 months, :D. Well, less than that actually, cause I visit them only 2x / week. ]

Here is my veggie eatery log:

Around Shi Da area, the best food so far is at the 69 NTD all u can eat veggie place, located at one of the alleys of Shi Da Road. Been to several around Shi Da area.

The veggie place near Girfaffe/ Shandau Temple/ Shandau Temple MRT Exit Nr … is sometimes/ most of the time has a lot better food than the 69 place. It is around 80 NTD when you fill up the little lunch box.

This one near Xin Beitou MRT station has the greatest food, compared to what I have been tasting at other veggie eateries in Taipei/other cities/ towns in TW (discounting the veg restos I have been at FGS compound). Been only to this one in Xin Beitou. I topped up up the biggest lunch box they have, and it was around 200 NTD, cheaper than most places in taipei!

The veggie restos at FGS has defenately the best veggie foods I have ever tasted in TW. Been only to two of them while in Kaoshiong. It is around 50 NTD per dish at the one with tables and chairs outside, nice portion.

In Taoyuan, haven’t found a good one. Been to several.

In Zhong li: been to several, none is to my liking.

In Hsin Ying, (several train stops before) Tainan: been to some, none is to my liking.

Wish I have a scanner, so that I can scan u guys the cards I collected, but, of course, you’d need to see which is which for yourself, cause I don’t read Chinese.

I may continue this log later on, :).

Any feedbacks?

I may be in those cities/ towns again sometime in the next months.

Thank you very much, :)!

I can see where the comments about getting sick of soggy oily food from veggie buffets are coming from (in this and another thread), but isn’t this just a problem with Chinese food in Taiwan, not with vegetarian food specifically?

Many, if not most, of the vegetarian buffets and ‘noodle shops’ offer very cheap basic food, equivalent to what you get form regular cheap buffets and noodle shops. The food at those non-vegetarian places alos largely relies on the traditional Chiense flavouring agents of oil, salt and MSG.

On the other hand if you look around long enough it is quite possible to find veggie buffets and noodle shops that offer better-than-average food. They’re certainly not all awful.

I would generally class vegetarian restaurants into four or five categories:

Buffets: These are the most common. They usually charge by weight, sometimes by a counting method, and sometimes they have an all-you-can-eat rate. Many have very avergae food, but some can be good. Depends on the cooks I guess.

‘Noodle Shops’: These are places that offer biandangs (rice boxes) and noodles. Many are also not great - rice with a selection of vegetables you’d see at a buffet, or some kind of noodle soup, but I like some of the dishes like curry rice, or ‘hongshao’ noodles. Some places have really good ‘shuijiao’ dumplings. Every now and then you find a place where the food is much better than average. there’s a place near me with really nice curried-rice and excellent things like ‘xiao long bao’ steamed dumplings.

‘Up market’ traditional food restaurants: More like restaurants than noodle shops and so more expensive. Like a traditional Chiense restaurant you buy dishes to share or set meals for a number of people. Some of these places have really good food. There are also some upmarket buffets with really great food.

Special places: Taipei has a number of places with something different. Maybe it’s a western influenced place or something. I love Bruce’s Kitchen Garden - western and western-influenced food with great herbs. Hui Liu is great. Om Pot Hum is a really nice cafe. You can get veggie burgers at Wow Wow in Tianmu, or veggie-only hot pot somewhere in Dazhi. There’s even three restaurants serving nothing but vegetarian French cuisine.

Just thought of another category - veggie-organic: Seems like some places that used to be ‘noodle-shops’ have gone organic or ‘healthy’. They advertise as healthy vegetarian food. They often have mucht he smae food as a regular ‘noodle-shop’, but it’s a bit nicer and healthier and a bit more expensive (although sometimes these places seem to offer nothing more for their higher prices than the ‘healthy’ label and a nicer looking setting).

As for eating veggie at a non-veggie place, as I said before it’s usually not possbile at small noodle shops, biandang places, chains, food courts etc, but many restaurants will have veggie options or make something for you. The results vary greatly. Personally I like vegetarian hot pot (shabu shabu) and eat that fairly often.

Brian

[quote=“lime*monkey”]
Avoid French fries from places like McDonalds & co, they are using animal oil, or at least blended oil (I thought they were not supposed to do that worldwide anymore, but that’s what one manager at McDonalds here told us).[/quote]

McDonalds made a big press announcement about ten years ago. They said they would stop using animal oil. Then, they secretly switched bak to animal oil. Ten years go by, and then they got caught. They ended up needing to pay a $12 million settlement in the case brought against McDonald’s for misleading the public by making the claim that their French fries were made with vegetable oil when beef was actually included. The $12 million went to Jewish, Islamic and Hindi charities. If you’re interested you can search for the terms McDonalds, french fries, and case.

In addition, part of the settlement money is going toward research that can show vegetarians are deficient.[quote]Hyman said some proposed grants are anti-vegetarian, such as an $800,000 award to Tufts University to study nutrient deficiencies in vegetarians. Others do little to promote vegetarianism because the groups are too small or parochial, he said.[/quote]

Jolin is McDonald’s spokeswoman in Taiwan, but that doesn’t mean that McDonalds didn’t feed beef to vegetarians that believed the McDonalds press releases.

[quote=“Bu Lai En”] there’s a place near me with really nice curried-rice and excellent things like ‘xiao long bao’ steamed dumplings.

There’s even three restaurants serving nothing but vegetarian French cuisine.

Brian[/quote]

Where is that place?

Regarding the French restos, I found only one (sec. 7 of Chung Shan North Road, it seems).

Thank you, :)!

Near the corner of Nanhai Rd and Dingzhou Rd. Nothing fancy. Just a little hole-in-the-wall noodle shop. but with nice food and a few special things.

One is near Eslite bookstore main branch - sort of between Zhongxioa, Renai and Anhe, but I haven’t been there for years and diodn’t think it was that great (although others did). The other is in Gongguan on a little lane running from Dingzhou Rd to Roosevelt Rd. I’ve never been there, but somebody told me it was good.

Brian

O.K., this is already sounding like a pretty negative post so I’ll start by saying that there is lots of good vegetarian food in Taipei. It’s really not hard to stay veggie, although it does take a while to track down the best restaurants. And knowing a little Chinese sure helps to order veggie in non-veggie restaurants (which is otherwise pretty much impossible). I’ve had some of the best tofu products ever during my time here, as well as great Western-style vegetarian food (Bongos Veggie Quesidillas are highly recommended).

BUT…here comes my beef…there seems to be no respect for the pure enjoyment of good, fresh vegetables here. In my head I am picturing a plate of mixed vegetables - broccoli, carrots, pea pods, asparagus - sauteed and served with a light, savoury sauce. I have found no such thing in Taiwan. Most restaurants don’t even do mixed vegetables unless you get full orders of different vegetables and throw them together.