Most of the vegetarian restaurants in Guangzhou are catered to Buddhist and they are concentrated around the main Buddhist temple, Guangxiao Temple( ),on Jinghui Road, Yuexiu district. There’re around 4 vegetarian restaurants in this area.

If you are a Buddhist and it is important for you not to take any meat, include the oil, condiment etc., and the food is prepared in cooking utensils or store in fridge which never prepared meat, then these are the place for you to go.

However, if you are vegetarian due to health reason, then I am not sure if you should pay a visit to these vegetarian restaurants.

Since most of the foods are very greasy and oily, and default is, they would add lots of MSG. They would make a lot of dishes which look strikingly similar to meat, with vegetarian pork, seafood, etc. Needless to say, they need to add lots of additives in producing such “vegetarian meat”.

If you have never seen such “vegetarian meat”, which is strictly vegetarian food, and would like to give it a try, then it is OK to go there once.

You can try to request them to put on less oil,( ), or no MSG. But if it really works, only Buddha know.

So, if you only prefer not to eat meat, then maybe it is easier for you to go to a normal restaurant and request vegetarian dishes.

On 1st and 15th in each lunar month the Buddhist like to have vegetarian food around the Guangxiao Temple, the price may higher and people who come here might more than usual. If you don’t want to feel this atmosphere, try to come here on common days.

Quietness surrounds this area but only one hotel is sited here unless you go the Renminbei road, 5 minutes walk from the Guangxiao Temple.

Also, you can find 2 vegetarian stores and a market selling vegetarian foods, like cornmeal, food made from soybean ，Snow lotus of Tianshan( ), prepared vegetarian dish, “vegetarian meat”，etc.

If you’d like to worship Buddha at temple，there are other two temples, Six Banyan Temple （）,2 blocks away, and Giant Buddha Temple (), 6 bus stops away, near Beijing Road. However, you cannot find such vegetarian restaurants around these temples.

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