The Lakeside Veggie

Rosa holds the pass in Xuhui

Rosa keeps the line moving as Executive Chef at The Lakeside Veggie in Shanghai, where the open kitchen gives the room a direct view of the bench. At the pass, her authority is less a flourish than a sequence of decisions: when the dumplings leave the steamer, how far tofu can char before bitterness arrives, how much mushroom depth a broth can carry before it turns heavy. The restaurant names her public role clearly, and that role gives the Shanghai outpost its present kitchen voice.

Rosa is also described as chef and owner here, a position that reaches beyond plating into the maintenance of the room, the pace of service, and the standards that hold a plant-based Chinese menu together night after night. Her known lineage is this post itself.

Mushrooms, steam and char

The program works through familiar Chinese gestures, then tightens them around plant-based ingredients. Matsutake soup dumplings bring broth inside translucent skins, built around mushrooms rather than pork gelatin. Seared tofu depends on contrast: a charred surface, a soft interior, smoke and pepper set against the bean curd’s quiet center. Eggplant, roasted tofu and dumplings sit beside dry-fried porcini on stone slabs, sliced mushrooms in chili sauce, and lotus root prepared for crispness and chew.

The restaurant’s format is à la carte, with sharing built into the way dishes arrive. A top favorites section helps order the meal without turning it into a tasting-menu procession. The cooking leans on steaming, searing, dry-frying and saucing, not on spectacle. Mushrooms do much of the savory work, especially where the kitchen wants depth without heaviness. Sesame, chili, smoky peppers and seasonal vegetables give the menu its register. Michelin recognized the restaurant with Bib Gourmand status in 2025, tied to cooking that delivers quality without formal ceremony.

The room around the open kitchen

The room sits in Xuhui District near Longhua Temple, inside a modern mall setting that folds temple visitors, shoppers and neighborhood diners into the same service. It is stylish rather than theatrical, with quiet background music and a show kitchen that makes the bench part of the room’s texture. Diners can watch hands fold, steam rise, plates collect at the pass. That visibility suits the food. Nothing here needs to be hidden behind ceremony.

The mood is upscale casual, but the better word is composed. The dining room stays calm enough for the small sounds of service to register: bowls set down, lids lifted, the brief pause before soup dumplings release their broth. The restaurant’s Hangzhou origin, drawn from the idea of lakeside vegetarian dining, follows the Shanghai address without making the room nostalgic. In Xuhui, the craft lives in the present tense, in Rosa’s seared tofu and matsutake soup dumplings.