Jade Buddha Temple: Mock meat at the vegetarian restaurant

Chicken feet, intestines, stir-fried kidneys. Not an uncommon sight on Chinese menus, but generally only sampled by the more adventurous meat eaters among us.

Where else do you get to play a guessing game with your entrees -- and actually enjoy it?

Now we can all tuck into these local specialties courtesy of Jade Buddha Temple’s vegetarian restaurant. It provides everything from pigeon to shark fin soup, all creatively constructed with vegetarian ingredients.

The guessing game

The restaurant gives dining out a new twist as you debate the ingredients of the mystery faux meat.

“It’s kind of like that Halloween game where you put your hand in a bowl, blindfolded, and have to guess what it is,” says Liz Austin, an American visiting Shanghai.

We ordered up a few dishes we would definitely avoid otherwise, as well as a few that just sounded good. The chicken feet with preserved hot peppers (RMB 16) was spicy, crunchy and chewy. Could it be pickled jicama? The marinated pig’s tripe (RMB 18) came in spongy strips, its texture brain-like with patterned divots.

“It’s like meat Jell-O,” speculates Austin.

“Or a bad Thanksgiving casserole,” offers Sarah Kiehna, her traveling companion.

The stir-fried kidneys with soy sauce (RMB 25) were perhaps the most easily recognizable: clearly some form of mushrooms. The roasted vegetarian ribs (RMB 18) were the tastiest fake meat we had ever tried with a salty, deep-fried exterior and a gray, pureed vegetable inside.

After we had finished sampling the 'meats,' we asked our waitress to pull up the curtain and reveal the true ingredients -- hopeful the joke wasn’t on us.

Your dinner revealed

We were right on with the kidneys: they were mushrooms. The rib’s gray insides were crushed lotus. And both the pig’s tripe and the chicken feet came from taro powder, an impressive feat since they didn’t taste at all alike.

She also told us that foreigners generally stay away from the odd 'meats,' opting instead for the restaurant’s variety of more recognizable dim sum options like durian pastries (RMB 30). The Chinese patrons often go for the faux delicacies like Cantonese roast duck, which is a steal at just RMB 16.

Our meal at Jade Buddha Temple vegetarian restaurant might not have been among Shanghai’s most exquisite, but it was definitely the most entertaining. Where else do you get to play a guessing game with your entrees -- and actually enjoy it?