Gongdelin — Restaurant in Shanghai

We were disappointed... As a vegetarian, I looked much forward to being able to order freely among dishes and eat some tasty Chinese food, and my carnivore friends were curious too. The man serving us seemed like he didn't want us to be there, and we actually didn't like the food, unfortunately. It was a bit flavorless and... weird. It would have been fun with the craziness of being served a whole fake fish, with carefully mimicked skin and everything, and fake shrimps with the exact same texture as real shrimp, if it had tasted good. Too bad it didn't really... All dishes we ordered had the same jelly-like consistency, which didn't help. Sorry, godelin! Go here if you want to try vegan-safe fake meat/fish, but don't bring too high expectations. Book a table or be prepared for possible...

The food was only so-so. We ordered sweet lotus root, preserved tofu with chili, soup with sweet & sour vegetables and water chestnut. Sweet lotus was overly sweet and had little taste besides sweetness. Preserved tofu turned out to be "stinky tofu" which is a local dish, and definitely a taste I did not like. But that might be just me (I like all kinds of tofu usually). The sauce was great, but the tofu not so much. Water chestnuts were ok, but nothing special. The soup was the best of the bunch, but lacked real flavor even though it was spicy. Price was reasonable, 90 RMB for the above + two cups of rice and coconut...

Avoid avoid avoid, im Chinese American and my family has visited this place a few times in the past 15+ years. The place was amazing before but the food now is awful. Service was somehow even worse, this is the only time I’ve left a place feeling like I needed to vomit. We couldn’t even finish our meal. I ended up eating at random places street level for 1/25th of the price. Quite unfortunate since this place is a well known establishment. It’s our fault for not noticing that there were only two other tables seated at peak dinner hour on a weekend....