Fu He Hui is a haven of stillness amid the car horns and frantic traffic of Shanghai. We have slipped into a modern building in the former International Settlement and have been shown upstairs to the restaurant, where our quiet private room is decorated with an almost Japanese minimalism. The dark wooden table is uncovered, and a latticed screen divides us from other guests. There’s an orchid on a traditional side table here, a piece of understated contemporary art there. We order both of the day’s set menus so that we can taste as many dishes as possible.

福和慧素食餐厅(Fu He Hui)清幽静谧，隐身于上海车水马龙、喧嚣嘈杂的闹市区。我们悄然进入位于昔日公共租界(International Settlement)的一幢现代风格建筑后，服务员把我们带至楼上的素餐厅，这儿的幽静私密包间几乎清一色用日式极简主义风格打造。深色木质餐桌没铺任何桌布，格子图案的屏风把各个包间彼此隔开。包间里靠墙的中式案几上放着一束兰花，墙上则挂着一幅风格含蓄的当代艺术作品。我们点了两份当天的套餐，这样就可以尽可能尝遍美味佳肴。

A few dainty nibbles whet our appetites. There’s a dark cone stuffed with chopped avocado, mango and tomato: it’s a snack we might be eating anywhere, except that the cone has been made of dried string lettuce, the delicious seaweed that’s a speciality of Ningbo in eastern China. A trio of small bites offers a nod to Buddhist vegetarian cooking: a sweet, glossy “spare rib” made of a plum impaled on a strip of lotus root; spiced tofu pressed into the form of a calabash gourd; and a bundle of Indian aster leaves wrapped in tofu skin. The soups are soft and tranquil: an intriguing walnut broth with longan and papaya, and a clear liquid with the floating pale lace of bamboo pith fungus.

店方的几道美味点心清爽开胃。首先是装满了鳄梨、芒果以及西红柿小块的黑色锥形脆筒：这道点心稀松平常，唯一不同的是锥形脆筒由产自中国东部城市宁波的特色美味紫菜干做成。小份量的“三品”因应了佛教的素餐观：“糖醋排骨”由插入莲藕的一截李子、压成宝葫芦(calabash gourd)样的素鸡以及裹着一把马兰头的豆腐皮做成。两份汤清淡素雅：放了龙眼和木瓜的核桃仁汤与飘着竹荪的松茸汤让人回味无穷。

Fu He Hui is the most recent venture from the team behind the notable Shanghai restaurants Fu1015, Fu1088 and Fu1039, and is under the stewardship of one of the city’s most outstanding chefs, Tony Lu. Last year it joined its sibling Fu1015 as one of the few Chinese restaurants in mainland China to make the San Pellegrino list of “Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants”, at Number 19.

福和慧是继上海久负盛名的福1015、福1088以及福1039餐厅后，该餐饮集团最新开设的一家素食餐厅，它由上海最知名的大厨卢怿明(Tony Lu)主理。去年，它与姐妹餐厅福1015同时入选圣培露(San Pellegrino)评选的“亚洲50家最佳餐厅”(Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants)名录，位列第19位，它们是中国大陆入选该名单屈指可数的餐厅。

But while the other restaurants in the Fu group have focused on exquisite renditions of traditional dishes, Fu He Hui has taken an unconventional road for Chinese haute cuisine, by serving entirely vegetarian food.

但是，当福餐饮集团(Fu group)旗下的其它餐厅专注于传统精致菜肴时，福和慧则另辟蹊径、推出了高端全素中餐。

Lu is a serious, brooding man with dark-rimmed spectacles that give him a rather schoolmasterly mien, though occasionally his stern expression breaks into hilarious laughter. Born in Shanghai in 1976, he began his career when Cantonese cuisine was the favoured style of restaurant food. Lu was not driven by an interest in cooking; like most Chinese chefs, he entered the profession because he lacked a decent education.

戴着深框眼镜的卢怿明既深沉又不苟言笑，一副翩翩学者的风度，虽说一本正经的他偶尔也会开怀大笑。他1976年出生于上海本地，刚入餐饮业时，粤菜是当时最为风靡的菜系。卢怿明选择这个行当，并非出于个人喜好；与多数中国厨师一样，他入行只是因为自己没能上大学。

He laughs when asked whether he enjoyed his apprenticeship. “I started out washing ducks, dealing with offal, doing that kind of dirty work. I was 19 years old and every day my master chef beat me, swore at me and destroyed my self-esteem,” he says. “Would you — would anyone — enjoy that kind of life?”

当我问他是否喜欢自己的学徒生涯时，他笑了。“我一开始的工作就是清洗鸭子、处理下水，干的都是些脏活累活。我当时19岁，每天师傅都会打骂我，这大大伤及我的自尊心。”他说，“你说哪个人会喜欢这种生活？”

He says it took him five or six years to discover his own creativity. He joined the Fu restaurant group as a consultant in 2005 and became executive chef a couple of years later.

他说自己花了5、6年时间才真正开窍。2005年，他以顾问身份加入福餐饮集团，几年后荣升为总厨师长。

Lu says that Fang Yuan, the owner of the Fu restaurants, is a Buddhist, and had been wanting to open a vegetarian restaurant for years. Originally the two of them intended to offer a fresh take on traditional Buddhist temple food. China has a rich, ancient tradition of Buddhist vegetarian cookery; larger monasteries often have restaurants where visitors can taste “meat” and “fish” dishes cleverly engineered from vegetable ingredients. Less than a mile from Fu He Hui, for example, you can drop into the restaurant at the Jade Buddha Temple for some “roast duck” and “ham” made with tofu, or vegetarian “pork chops” and “stir-fried crabmeat”. The crabmeat in particular is a wonder of culinary artifice: a rich tumble of mashed potato, carrot and egg white with ginger.

卢怿明说福餐饮集团老板方元(Fang Yuan)是虔诚的佛教徒，开设一家素餐厅是其多年的夙愿。他们两人最初想推寺庙传统素斋。中国的佛寺素斋花样繁多、历史悠久，大型寺庙通常开设有素斋馆，游客可以品尝到由素食精制而成的各种“鱼肉”大餐。举个例子，游客可以到离福和慧不到一英里的玉佛寺(Jade Buddha Temple)素斋餐厅品尝由豆腐、素排骨做成的“素烤鸭”、“素火腿”以及“素炒蟹粉”。尤其是炒蟹粉(stir-fried crabmeat)，俨然是餐饮艺术的杰作：它由土豆泥、胡萝卜以及蛋清加入姜丝爆炒而成，色香味俱浓。

By the time Fang and Lu were ready to open Fu He Hui, however, they’d had a complete change of heart. “We decided there was no need to strive to make all the food look like meat,” says Lu, “trying to recreate, for example, a cube of belly pork, complete with layers of ‘skin’, ‘fat’ and ‘lean meat’. We wanted to do something different.” Lu and his boss were frustrated by what they saw as the stagnation of Chinese vegetarian cooking at a time when ideas about eating vegetarian food were in a state of flux. “If you look back at vegetarian cuisine for the last 20 years, it’s barely developed, because no one has tried to push it forward, even in Shanghai, where there are so many different styles of eating and anything is possible,” he says. “A lot of traditional vegetarian food is excessively processed, with lots of oil and MSG flung in out of desperation, to make it taste good.”

但当方元与卢怿明准备开设福和慧素食餐厅时，他们又有了完全不同的想法。“我们当时认为没必要挖空心思把所有菜肴都做成肉食模样。”卢怿明回忆道，“举个例子，我们曾希望打造由‘肉皮’、‘膘’以及‘瘦肉’构成的五花肉，最后我们决心另辟蹊径。”看到当时中国的素斋餐饮行业停滞不前，卢怿明与方元颇感沮丧，而当时食素餐的理念开始兴起。“前溯20年，中国的素餐业几乎是原地踏步走，原因是没人真心实意推行，甚至上海也是如此，形形色色的菜系汇聚于此，可谓应有尽有。”他说，“很多传统素餐过度加工，过多使用食用油以及超量添加味精，目的就是为了增鲜。”

In China, attitudes towards vegetarian eating are traditionally very different from those in the west. Strict vegetarianism is strongly associated with Buddhism, and is rare outside monasteries. Part-time vegetarianism, however, is common. Many lay Chinese Buddhists renounce meat on certain days, when they make offerings at their local temples; the rest of the time they eat meat. Historically, an element of vegetarianism has been seen as part of the simple lifestyle chosen by a certain type of Chinese scholar, such as the 13th-century poet Lin Hong, whose “Pure Offerings of a Mountain Hermit” includes many vegetarian recipes. And, until recently, most Chinese people couldn’t afford to eat much meat anyway.

从历史上看，中国人食用素餐的观念与西方大相径庭。完全吃素与佛教紧密关联，寺院外的遵行者凤毛麟角。但是，偶尔吃素的现象比比皆是。中国很多佛教居士在某些特殊日子（如赴当地寺庙进香献祭时）禁用肉食；他们平时则不忌肉食。在中国历史上，吃素一直被视为某些文人墨客所选择的清淡生活的一种方式，如14世纪的诗人林鸿(Lin Hong)，他的著作Pure Offerings of a Mountain Hermit中就收录了很多素餐烹制法；再说了，大多数中国人过去也吃不起太多肉食。

But if eating far less meat than, say, Americans do is the norm in China, the total renunciation of meat has generally been regarded as eccentric. Chinese people tend to talk about their own vegetarian habits as “vegetarian eating” (su shi), in contrast to the ideological “vegetarianism” of the west (su shi zhu yi). Even the owner of Fu He Hui eats meat some of the time. “Of course he’s not a total vegetarian,” says Lu, “This is one of China’s special characteristics!”

但是，如果说中国人比美国人吃肉要少得多属于常态，那么完全忌肉则被视为匪夷所思之举。中国人往往把自己食素的习惯称作“吃素”，它与西方人脑海中的素食理念截然不同。甚至福和慧素食餐厅的老板偶尔也吃肉。“当然，方元并非完完全全的素食者。”卢怿明说，“这也正是中国社会的一大特色！”

There is no à la carte at Fu He Hui, just a selection of daily set menus priced from Rmb380 (￡40) to Rmb880 (￡95) — audacious prices for vegetarian food. But vegetarian eating is growing in popularity among China’s urban intelligentsia, and Fang and Lu were confident there were new opportunities for a high-end vegetarian restaurant in the country’s most sophisticated city.

福和慧素食餐厅并无点菜之说，只需选择每天提供的套餐（每位价位380元-880元，约合40-95英镑）——这样的素餐价位令人咋舌。但食用素餐越来越受到中国知识分子阶层的青睐，方元和卢怿明相信在上海这座中国最为发达的城市，高档素餐馆的前景一片光明。

Apart from the “spare rib” appetiser and a mushroom cutlet, there were no fake meat dishes on our lunch menus at Fu He Hui. We enjoyed a series of exquisite dishes that drew freely on Chinese and western ingredients and culinary conventions. Gorgeous fried aubergine rolls came sleek with teriyaki sauce and a scattering of sesame seeds; twin purées of purple and white yam were arranged in yin-yang formation and adorned with termite mushrooms. There was a square of green soybean tofu with black truffle and burdock in a satiny pumpkin sauce; a simple stir-fry of lily bulb, ginkgo nuts, elm-ear mushrooms and asparagus; and a slice of grilled king oyster mushroom on a pancake with crisp tofu skin, cucumber and fermented soy paste, to be rolled up like Peking duck. A fabulous risotto was made with shepherd’s purse, a favourite Shanghainese vegetable, but was also threaded with the scent of truffle and a dairy richness.

除了异常开胃的素烧排骨以及白灵菇(mushroom cutlet)这两道菜外，福和慧的午餐套餐单上再无其它“假肉菜”了。我们津津有味地享用了一道道由东西方食材以及烹制法做成的美味佳肴。淋着红烧汤汁、撒着芝麻粒的茄子爽脆卷美仑美奂；摆成阴阳图案造型、上用鸡枞菌点缀的双色（紫色与白色）山药泥；放在黑亮南瓜形器皿中、松露与牛蒡点缀的方块形绿豆豆腐；清炒素菜（由百合、银杏果、榆树木耳以及芦笋等组成）；以及一片放在薄煎饼上的烤杏鲍菇片（配有脆豆腐皮、黄瓜以及发酵的豆瓣酱，像北京烤鸭似地把它们卷起来享用）；美不胜收的烩饭中加入了上海人最爱吃的蔬菜——荠菜，而且既有松露的清香又有醇厚的牛奶。

For a Shanghainese chef such as Lu, accustomed to cooking with meat and seasoning his dishes with rich stocks, cured hams and dried seafood, embarking on a vegetarian menu was a challenge. “Normally, you can use absolutely any ingredient you fancy,” he says. “But this is like writing an essay on an assigned subject — you can only use a limited range of ingredients, so you have to bring into play your finest culinary imagination.”

对于卢怿明这种习惯于烹制肉食以及用各种存备货、腌火腿以及干海鲜的上海本地厨师来说，开天辟地尝试全素餐是巨大的挑战。“一般说来，厨师可以随心所欲使用各种食材。”他说，“但是，这就好比写一篇指定题材的文章——使用的食材非常有限，因此厨师必须发挥自己最好的厨艺想象力。”

He’s still a meat-eater himself, though he’s increasingly drawn to vegetarianism. “But when it comes down to it, I don’t really like eating at all,” he says, apparently serious. Despite the deliciousness of his creations, Lu insists that his own favourite food is bai mi fan — plain white rice.

尽管他本人越来越青睐素食主义理念，但他仍时常吃肉。“但一言以蔽之，本人对吃一点都不感兴趣。”他一本正经地说道。尽管卢怿明推出的素餐美不胜收，但他坚称白米饭仍是自己的最爱。