Shangri-La Vegetarian Restaurant

I needed vegan food in the city, so I popped on Unilocal and found this place. I placed a phone order for pick-​up and was referencing their online menu. First, the online prices are ALL WRONG. They charge about $ 2 – 3 more per dish than the online menu states.
Second, the food. I got the tofu with mushrooms and the pie pa tofu balls. Total price was $ 20, rather than the $ 13 I was expecting after ordering through the phone. It would have been fine if the food was really great, but unfortunately, I was really not impressed at all. The tofu with mushrooms dish was basic without any kind of flavor, and the tofu balls were just okay. They had meat subs in the tofu balls which surprised me. Not bad, but I’m not crazy about it. There isn’t much else to say.

The most amazing veggie restaurant I’ve ever been to. Exceedingly tasty cuisine and amazing prices. I had 5 items on the menu and portions were generous and delicious. Thank you for the amazing gustatory experience.

Super charming spot. The owners are very sweet and observant, so your tea pot and water will never by empty. The food is good, portions are generous, prices are absolutely reasonable, and the overall experience is great.
We got:
Tea — delicious! had a hint of ginger and something else that made it very unique, but good.
Spring rolls — good, crispy, solid fill.
Daily Soup — not to my tasting
Mongolian beef — Amazingly good, a little spicy, but I would order it again.
Spicy eggplant — Tender, well flavored and a table winner.
Chow mein — Every last noodle was eaten!
Cashew chicken — Emptied by the time I looked over.
Everyone was happy and incredibly satiated.

I think we had the lunch menu item «b-​3». I was lucky enough to come with a friend that knew the menu and he described it as Mongolian lamb. Unbefuckingable.
The texture of the «lamb» was better than real lamb. It has a slightly stringy bite like real braised lamb. It has a fatty almost tendon like chewiness like lamb shanks. It was stir fried with broccoli in a nice «medical» sauce.
Total meat satisfaction and its kosher to boot.
Excellent fragrance on the brown black rice.
The tea they serve is top notch.
If you are locked into a meatless diet and miss real meat, go here before you cave into what you might not be really missing.
The chef came out and watched us to make sure all was good like a mother watches over her children. He must be the owner to boot.
This place is very special.

Stepping into Shangri-​La is like walking into a temple – the ambiance is beautiful and soothing like a sanctuary, with details like woven pendant lamps shaped like flowers and paintings on the wall. Soaking in the ambiance, you feel ready for soul cleansing with simple vegetarian food.
The menu features traditional Chinese vegetarian dishes (like fake goose) and classic Chinese dishes made vegetarian (like Mongolian beef)
— Tea: It’s a special type of herbal tea. Very aromatic
— 8) Veggie goose (素鵝, $ 4.50): Compares well with veggie goose at Chinese vegetarian places in Asia! I especially liked how it was served warm (I’ve usually seen it pre-​made and cold). It brought out the bean curd taste better and was more comforting
— 68) Taro and assorted vegetables clay pot ($ 8.25): Mm delicious chunks of taro! The fake meat meatballs were delicious too, with a nice addition of mushrooms for a chewy texture and heavier flavor. The stir-​fried vegetables were more oily that I would have liked though
— 71) Won ton noodle soup in Shanghai style (雲吞湯麵, $ 6.95): The noodles looked like sphaghetti but tasted housemade! Very wheaty and similar to the wonton skin. Wontons were good but too much skin with the small portion of filling
— 73) Tan Tan noodle in home made sauce (花生醬麵, $ 6.95): They had warned me that this was sweet, and indeed I saw a sprinkle of sugar on top. I love peanut butter and enjoyed San Tung’s peanut butter noodles, but I think Shangri-​La could have done away with the sugar
Note: Gluten is a type of Chinese vegetarian food. I think it doesn’t have anything to do with the gluten of gluten-​free-​ism, though you could always inquire about… gluten-​free gluten.
It’s healthy and unique, but you need to be in the mood. I was still in the holiday feasting mindset, so I wasn’t entirely satisfied with dinner here. (The next day I got popcorn chicken for lunch)

My all time favorite vegetarian restaurant :) You should definitely try their imitation meat and vegetable fried rice. They also have a one of a kind tea :)

A «simple» main meal and a soup extra make a great oil free vegan meal, especially when combined with endless twig tea.
If you’re near Albany, check out Potala as it is the same thing, just in a different location and with a prettier view. I recently saw shangri-​la is opening a new restaurant on telegraph also, so check that out!

Our Sizzling Rice Soup with Veggie Chicken with Black Bean Sauce went great with Old Beiging Special Sauce Noodles. The Five page menu offers something for everyone including Gluten Free dishes. Appetizers, soups, Tofu (bean curd), Veggie meats & specialties, Chow Mein & Noodle soup, Fried Rice & Deserts. So many great choices!

My go-​to vegetarian restaurant! I love the ambience of Shangri-​La. It feels so homey and personal when you go there. The Pie Pa tofu balls are hands down the best thing on the menu, followed closely by their cashew chicken. Don’t even consider white rice there, because their brown rice mix is amazing! The staff are so friendly here and the food so delicious that I find my non-​vegetarian friends always picking this as a dinner spot. Two thumbs up, Shangri-​La!

10÷9÷2015
Took my wife and parents to this vegan restaurant to celebrate early mood festival. Searching for a good descent vegan place for both my parents and stubble on to this small little vegan place call Shangri-​la. All I can say is so far this is the only chinese vegan restaurant that I can say is good. well maybe I just got lucky and went there when they were slow. For me to really get the true taste of chinese restaurant is to order when they r super busy to see if they can keep there quality fresh and eatable. That is the only time that u can really taste true chinese food. if the so call cooks or chef what ever u like to call them if they really cooked with there heart or just cooked like the mexican chinese chefs @ Las vegas. well I have to say even they can cook better food than the chinese chefs here in the city of San Francisco. I guess maybe is because some people take pride in there work. Any way I will go back to really try when they r busy packed with people. i don’t really mind for the wait if the food is really great.

So this is the benefit of getting off the grid and diving into the people every once in awhile, fellow netizens. My last night in SF I was trying to decide on a long list of fancy pants dinner spots that I had painstakingly researched on Unilocal,until I got into a conversation with some random individual I met on my journey through the fog. Yes, an actual old fashioned conversation, not a text, or chat or other anonymous forum, face to face, as it were. So that’s how I found this little hole in the wall.
I am studying herbs, and have always heard that there are places like this in China, but never seen them stateside until now. This restaurant has dishes and herbal soups to eat as medicine, but they have made them taste good. Believe me, if you’ve ever had Chinese herbal medicine, you know that making it palatable is no small feat. The Chinese believe that eating correctly can prevent illness, and vice versa. We need to take care of ourselves, you know, especially if we are under stress or subject to extremes of temperature. We Americans always neglect our health and worry too much, which is why we end up as a nervous wreck half the time. Anyways, based on your symptoms or energy imbalance, you can chose a few items on the menu, that if eaten consistently, will help you get better. Take note: Jiang hai shi lao de la (old ginger is hotter). The key here is persistence and patience/​endurance.
I had some herbal soup that warmed me up from the cold and was pretty good in my view.
My fortune was: Bu ru hu xue yan de hu zi, whatever that means. Something about tigers at any rate.
_​M_​iaow. ^-.-^

Fresh and flavorful Chinese food served with a smile! I’m never disappointed here.

Definitely one of my favorite Asian style vegetarian restaurants in the city.
I’m a meat eater who occasionally feels like a vegetarian meal.
Who knew that «meat» could taste that good?
So if you’re a meat lover who is skeptical about eating vegetarian at all, this place is well worth a shot. Take it from me, my boyfriend is someone who loves and needs meat/​protein in his every meal… until I brought him here. He is now a believer of delicious vegetarian.
Every time I eat here, I order 3 – 5 dishes depending on how many people I’m eating with. I usually order random things to try out on the menu and the 2 out of those must-​get dishes for me are the Pie Pa Tofu Balls, and the tofu with veggie pork. Also one of my favorites is the veggie lamb dish on the herbal page.
The dishes here are all colorful and flavorful, but also not too intense which is perfect because I don’t like it when the food is too salty or way too oily. I also love how every dish they have include a ton of veggies in it, so you don’t need to really order a «meat» dish and a whole other separate veggie dish that’s going to cost you another ~$ 10+ at another Chinese restaurant.
The restaurant is a bit dim with a homey feeling. The staff here are very friendly, and honest when answering your questions about the menu. Its usually one waitress, so when the place is packed, she becomes super busy and may not get to you as quick as you’d like. The only reason why I’m giving it a 4 star instead of 5 is because of this reason, and that the dishes are a bit more oily compared to other Chinese vegetarian places (But don’t be scared off because I’m one of the more picky people, to my boyfriend, its not oily at all).
Anyway, give this place a try, be mindful that the waitress is super busy by herself, and you wont regret it cause the food is great!

So cool! I had VEGETARIAN TRIPE!!! Who knew such a thing existed? It tasted delicious, although the texture seemed different than what I suspect the texture of real tripe would feel like. Either way, super savory and yummy. Even the rice taster abnormally good.
I really like the interesting menu items here – seems more unique than a typical American Chinese restaurant (even beyond just being vegetarian, I mean).
The people who worked here were also very sweet.

This was a new dining experience for me.
My friend and I started by splitting two soups, the Vegetarian Chicken and the Vegetarian Lamb in Broth of Panax Ginseng and Wolfberry, followed by the sizzling Veggie Duck on an Iron Plate, Veggie Kidney with Basil, Taro Veggie Meat in Clay Pot, and Veggie Ham Fried Rice. (Needless to say there was enough to take home.)
The soup was very tasty but different from anything I’ve tried before. I was especially taken with the vegetarian duck and absolutely loved the sauce. Next on the «loved it» list was the clay pot, followed by the fried rice and finally the kidney.
I’ll definitely be back for another visit and the duck and clay pot will be on the must order list. I probably won’t get the kidney next time and, since I always get fried rice, I’ll try a different one the next time.
In all cases, the vegetables were fresh and crisp.
This restaurant is now on my list of great places for a vegetarian/​vegan.

Speaking of China, sometimes me and my mom and my dad love some Chinese food but we are kosher. well, sometimes we do break being kosher and go to Dunkin Donuts back in Jersey, but if you don’t ask I won’t tell.
I really like all of the dishes that I’ve had here and the service was very good indeed. I suppose if I have to be vegetarian and kosher when I go out just to be on the safe side you know, I’m going to have to make some sacrifices when it comes for flavor. There’s nothing like real Chinese food, I even broke being kosher and went to Panda Express one day when I was really upset after I had a fight on Facebook, well I had broccoli beef and orange chicken, & I loved it. but this place serves nutritious food, as well being vegetarian and kosher, so I really don’t feel that I should have room for complaint because its covering all the bases.

Is there some kind of Chinese, kosher, vegetarian customer segment out there that has ridiculous amounts of disposable income, or did the owners of this place just decide to combine all their beliefs and passions into $ 10 a plate food and a hard-​to-​navigate website that looks like it was built for Netscape?
Shangri-​La offers very good, authentic-​leaning, Chinese food while using exclusively meat-​substitutes (wheat protein). My friend and I that were visiting SF ordered the spicy cold cucumber, a fried tofu dish (we asked for it to be spicy, so the cook added pleanty of Sichuan bean paste), the sauteed broccoli, and the beef and noodle soup. There’s a special place in my heart for beef and noodle soup — I don’t eat it anymore as a vegetarian, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the «fake beef». It wasn’t salty enough, though, while the tofu dish, because of the extra bean paste, was too salty. Despite this, we happily ate all the beef and noodles, as well as all the tofu. The cucumber was fresh and tasted cool, but then hit hard with a spicy after taste. The broccoli had a bit of a strange aftertaste and probably too much sauce, but paired nicely with the tofu.
Though kind of far from everything else in town, Shangri-​La is a great vegetarian restaurant with an authentic feel.

This place rules! It’s overwhelming going into a Kosher Vegetarian Chinese restaurant. I wasn’t aware that even existed.
Everything on the menu is vegetarian, and on top of that, 100% Kosher? Crazy. It’s a fantasy to reality type of place.
I got the clay pot, and the fake meat tastes like meat. It’s so bizarre. It was obviously some sort of vegetable, but it was a great meat replacement.
It’s still a Chinese restaurant so don’t expect super fast service, but go there when you have some time. It’s really great!

I have to stay, this is one of the best vegan spots I ever tried and the price isn’t too bad either.
I recommend getting the tofu with some sauce and broccoli. I forgot the name of it… And I also ordered the fake beef meat which wasn’t bad either. Most of the tofu dishes are pretty good.

First time for dinner and it was awesome! Large portions for their entrees and very affordable. Best of all, it was very healthy! First vegetarian place I actually keep coming back to. Some places are just okay and the food almost always tastes bland. But I cannot emphasize enough how vegetarians and carnivores alike should flock to this place. It’s pretty great. It’s been around for awhile, which means they’ve been doing something right.
3 things I ordered (apologies for the unofficial names): broccoli tofu, asparagus with mushrooms, and sweet & sour walnuts– all with a side of brown rice. SO GOOD! I definitely would recommend anyone looking for a good vegetarian place to check this place out!
PS: Service is great!