Food Review: Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant 八宝素食馆

Last week I had my first vegetarian dining experience, with an 8-course meal to boot! Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant is a family business that sells purely vegetarian food, and they've been running for 9 years now at a three-storey shophouse in Chinatown.

As part of the OpenRice tasting, we were treated to their Chinese New Year 8-course set menu for 8-10pax, which cost $368+.

Veg. Sharks' Fin with White Fungus and Wolfberries

First up was this soup, which was a good take on the actual sharks' fin soup, and much much more eco-friendly! The sharks' fin is the white strands in the above picture, and is made of konnyaku jelly, which withstands heat better than agar. It is fibruous and aids in digestion. The white fungus has a QQ texture and I love the enoki mushrooms inside!

Fruit Salad Veg. Chicken

Here, the chicken envelopes the fruit salad below. The chicken is made of potato while the skin is actually beancurd skin. I didn't really like the potato taste of the chicken but the fruit salad was refreshing. To cater to the vegans, the mayonnaise is made without using eggs.

Thai Style Veg. Cod Fish

The fish is served looking like a cod fish. It is made of wheat and soybean, and the texture is made to feel like you're chewing on fish meat! The Thai sauce is also made in house, and it was just nice to give you a little kick of the spiciness.

Veg. Abalone Mushroom with Tou Pau and Seasonal Greens

The presentation was quite nice, with the broccoli at the outer rim and abalone slices layering on top of the mushrooms. Once again the abalone is made of konnyaku, and the mushrooms were really juicy and had that earthiness taste.

Veg. Cereal Prawns

This is my favourite dish out of the many good ones! I love cereal dishes, be it chicken, prawn or fish, and I was excited to try the vegetarian version. The prawns are also made of konnyaku, and the texture was ON POINT! If I was blindfolded and unaware that this is vegetarian, I'd have thought I was eating the real prawns. The batter wasn't too greasy, but I'd have preferred it a bit thinner.

Fragrant Yam Ring

I don't like yam in general so I didn't have much of this, but it was a good dish overall. There were mock chicken meat in it and it was very tasty too!

Braised Ee Fu Noodles

A common dish served at wedding dinners, I like this dish because it was delicious, with the noodles having the wok hei and stir-fried with lots of veggies!

Honey Sauce Veg. Pork

Zenna, the boss's daughter who was hosting us, very generously let us try this dish even though it's not part of the CNY set menu. She was raving to us about this which is their restaurant's best seller since day one.

Firstly, the appearance of the dish can already win you over. It looks just like the actual pork belly, and you can see the distinct layers! Secondly, the taste was equally good too! The konnyaku jelly used to make the 'meat' was soft, yet retaining some bite to mimick the actual pork meat. And the so-called fats? You can feel free to eat it because they're definitely not fats! And the sauce rounded up the whole dish but adding the extra oomph. Highly recommended!

Rainbow Yu Sheng Veg.

This was supposed to be the first dish but we decided to leave it till the end. This was pretty much the same as the normal ones you can find out there, just that the 'salmon' is also made of konnyaku jelly! It looks just like salmon sashimi (though it's cut more rectangularly) and tastes as slimy and chewy too! xD Now you don't have to worry about whether the fish is fit for consumption, given the recent spate of freshwater fish incidents.

Fruity Mango Pudding

We rounded off our night with dessert! I thought this mango pudding was a bit sweet. Other than that it's an appropriate dessert - something light and refreshing after so many dishes. (:

Overall, Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant is the place to try tasty vegetarian dishes that will impress even the non-vegetarians! I'm glad I got to try their food because it changed my opinion about vegetarian food haha. They use a lot of soy beans, konnyaku jelly in their food which are healthier too, and don't use egg, onions or garlic. For those of you who are interested to visit them during the upcoming CNY period, they are open every day and reservations are strongly encouraged!
Thank you Zenna for being a wonderful and friendly host and OpenRice for the tasting!


Eight Treasures Vegetarian Restaurant
282A South Bridge Road
Singapore 058831
Mon - Sun 1100 - 2200
65347727
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