21 little dishes

Chinese vegetarian set menu, but make it unlimited

Yesterday I went to a restaurant called Wu Xiang Song 無相颂 and had the most delightful meal I’ve had in China in a while. And I don’t know if it was the company, or the setting, or the novelty of the little dishes (ichiju-sansai aesthetic meets hodgepodge maximalism), or the abundance (unlimited self-serve! only 88 RMB / $12 per person!) but I left wondering how this place exists. A tiny staff operating seven days a week of lunch and dinner service serving food with a level of flavor and detail that puts most fine-dining to shame.

The style of the cooking is typical allium-free Chinese vegetarian (纯素: no garlic, onions, chives, etc. or animal products including eggs or dairy). Unlike canteen vegetarian buffets, of which there are many in each city, there are no chafing dishes over warming trays; you’re seated and you serve yourself, but the tiny composed dishes are constantly refreshed, and the service is doting and considerate, with staff bringing us surprise items while we ate.

Every bite of food had multiple components. A piece of baojiang tofu, slightly funky, grilled by a cook over a live flame and brought up to guests on the second floor, a puff of steam releasing upon first bite of the crisp skin like hot air from a balloon. Other favorites were a roll of nori, avocado, corn and cucumber in layers of rice paper, and blanched fiddlehead ferns, and a matsutake-squash filling perched on a crackling soy sheet, and battered sugar-fermented rose petals with rose syrup, and two perfect bites of potato on rugs of black morel glazed with spicy soy.