Shanghai Villa — Restaurant in New York

May 2023 update:

The Vegan mecha that was Go Zen has been another unfortunate victim of the post pandemic apocalypse. They closed down sometime in April and were replaced by Shanghai Villa. It looks like they kept the same Google page as it's having me update my review. The new place looks super spacious and much brighter. The food was amazing! They are now offering both vegan and non vegan options, as someone that can get down with veggies I was super excited to see this. The sweet and sour pork Tenderloin had quickly become my new fav along with the super cheap spring Noodle Soup. Definately don't sleep on this place

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Go Zen is a relaxing restaurant with a good selection of food. I am a non vegan that comes to the area often and find myself thinking of certain dishes when I am in the area. I do not eat soy meat but they give you the option to change to tofu or seitan in some cases. Everything is pretty fresh and they never complain when i nestle myself on my laptop and stay for hours sipping tea and ordering apps. The service is always great and one of the waitstaff, A3, is very friendly and talkative. I have never had a dull moment while he is around. The bathrooms are always neat and orderly as well as the dining area being very clean.

If you are in the mood for vegan food this is definitely the place, only reason for the 4 star is because on the weekends it does get pretty crowded making it hard to stay for long...

An entirely vegan menu with a good number of items labeled GFO (gluten-free option). Most of them sounded so good, but when I came here with a friend, we were just looking for a light meal. I got one of the small plates - the Stuffed Eggplant (slices of eggplant with a tofu "cheese" filling), which was baked in a brown sauce. From glancing at dishes that other people ordered, I surmised that a lot of items aren't exactly "healthy" - quite a few fried items, and I expected the brown sauce for my eggplant dish to be salty ... but much to my surprise, it wasn't! It had a hearty flavor from the roasted tomatoes and basil, but not too much sodium at all.

Service was good, and our servers were nice and prompt. My dish did take a little while longer to come out than expected, but our server said it was because it had to be baked in the oven, so it would need more time. Thankfully, I didn't mind that much and was fine to wait.

Also, my small plate came with a small bowl of brown rice. I asked if I could have something other than rice (like plain steamed vegetables of some kind), but unfortunately that wasn't an option. I guess it's either rice or no rice.

Aside from that, though, I do want to come back and try some other dishes. I'm always happy when there are more than just one or two dishes I can eat at...

Good place. If not for the loud people talking next to me, it would truly be Zen - the music was very relaxing and the lights were dim.

I had the dumplings and the Shanghai Seitan. Portions were decently sized but I was disappointed to find out that the main dish didn’t come with rice so I had to order that separately. I don’t think I’ve ever been to an Asian restaurant where the dish didn’t come with a side lol.

Just a heads up, if you are a mushroom lover like me, don’t order the Shanghai Seitan, order the Oyster mushrooms with Chinese broccoli down the menu instead - they’re basically the same dish but one has seitan, and I only got two pathetic little pieces of mushrooms buried at the bottom under all the seitan and Chinese broccoli lol. The seitan was way too dry for my taste but it may be because I’m not used to eating fried foods.

I will definitely give this place another shot. Overall I enjoyed it as the food wasn’t overly salty or overly oily. Ginger Root on the Upper East Side is still my favorite spot for pan Asian food, but I think Go Zen will be alright for when I don’t have the time to go all the way up there.

UPDATE: Apparently this place is under new name and management now and apparently not 100% vegan anymore? Eww. The animals out there are only like 49% dead now,...