Vegetarian Tomato Beef Noodle Restaurant — Restaurant in Xinyi District

This restaurant is a gem! Beef noodle soup is a cornerstone of Taiwanese cuisine, but the vegetarians unfortunately miss out most times. This restaurant serves some of the best plant-based noodle soup I've ever had! I would highly recommend coming here after a hike up Xiangshan when you're extra hungry, but it's worth a visit any time. It's pretty easy to find and just a couples minutes' walk from the base of the Xiangshan trail. There is plenty of seating, you order on the menu with a wax pencil (they have an English side to the menu for foreign visitors which is helpful) and then pay after you eat. Everything here is vegetarian! We had two bowls of the tomato beef noodle soup (we ordered one then realized we had to have another), the sesame sauce noodles, and the 紅油抄手.

I'm an omnivore and have had countless bowls of meat-based beef noodle soup in my life. I wouldn't say the dish here is an exact imitation, nor is it trying to be. It is something similarly hearty, soul-warming, and savory, even without the beefy flavor. The "beef", rather than making it out of chunks of seitan or tempeh, is made of huge chunks of what appear to be lion's mane mushrooms. Even just sourcing those mushrooms must be quite a feat, but they flavor and braise them well, too. Aside from that, the noodles and broth are highly pleasant and very satisfying. The sesame sauce noodles, while smaller in portion, are delicious. The 紅油抄手 are a great vegetarian version. The sauce is highly vinegary, much more than I'm used to with this dish, so don't be like me and swallow the whole thing in one bite and then have a coughing fit while your throat burns from the vinegar. The prices are incredibly reasonable especially given how rare and special lion's mane mushrooms are. The nice man running the restaurant is very kind. The atmosphere is very relaxed, and there was what I think was a Buddhist chant playing in the background when we were there...quite meditative.

If you're vegetarian or even if you're omnivorous but enjoy eating plant-based, this is a...

The male owner was very nice. He told us to eat first and then pay.

Honestly, I would have never stepped foot into this restaurant if not for google. It was hard to tell what kind of store this was but I'm glad Google came to the rescue.

After hiking the elephant trail, we were looking for something to eat. We came across this and decided to give it a try.

I'm not a vegetarian but was curious how a vegetarian beef noodle would taste. Honestly, I was quite surprised. From a visual point of view, the mushrooms do look and resemble the texture of beef. Also, there was another type of mushroom that looked like beef tendon. Amazing!

Taste wise, of course it didn't taste like beef but that's OK and what I expected. It doesn't make it any less delicious because it was. The noodles had a nice chewy bounciness. The broth was very rich with an almost beefy tomatoey flavor.

It would have been nice if there were scallions or some type of pickled mustard greens sprinkled on top. But it was very good...

This place was thankfully, a couple minutes from where I lived - a local veg restaurant