Temple Food

Tonight one of the New Interchange teachers, Jocelyn, introduced us to a restaurant inside a Buddhist temple near the main building of New Oriental. The place was pretty cool and since it was inside a temple, the whole menu was vegetarian. This isn’t saying that we ate stir fried vegetables and rice for our whole dinner; there were “meat” dishes offered, but they were all made of tofu. We got a handful of “meat” dishes to try and got some vegetable dishes, too (in case the tofu was gross). Fortunately, the fake meat was pretty tasty – it was hard to distinguish if they were serving us real meat or not! The ground “chicken” and vegetable dish was gone within minutes, and I could have eaten the dumpling soup everyday. On the other hand, the cold cuts tasted a bit like flavored cardboard and had the appetizing texture of an old shoe. Also, the fried wontons were smothered in a strange honey coating and were too oily and cold to be delicious. Some of the vegetable dishes offered were really good, too (no surprise there, it is a vegetarian restaurant after all). We had a fried or roasted corn dish with peppers, bok choi (a favorite of mine), and some sweet potatoes with cinnamon that tasted like they came right out of the kitchen of Georgia Brown’s (a Southern cooking restaurant in DC).

It was a really great experience, but I don’t think I’ll be going back again. I prefer meat to “meat” and I’d rather try out new places in Wuhan than being a repeat customer. I’m glad that we branched out and tried something completely new to all of us – if you ever get the chance to eat in a temple, make sure to take advantage of that opportunity!