Godly (Gongdelin, Nanjing West Road)

Godly, known in Chinese as Gongdelin, is a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant on Nanjing West Road in Huangpu, and it has been serving plant-based Shanghainese and Huaiyang cooking since 1922. The kitchen works in the old temple-cuisine tradition, turning wheat gluten, tofu skin and mushrooms into versions of duck, ham and fish that arrive looking like the thing they are imitating. Everything on the menu is meat-free, which makes ordering unusually low-stress if you are vegetarian and tired of interrogating waiters. Come for the mock duck and the vegetarian goose, and note the split service hours: the kitchen closes mid-afternoon and again after nine.