Taste of Zen

A scam. Menu has no prices. At the end of your meal to give you a bill in which all items are $ 15. And then they charge you three dollars for tea. And the place is ugly and the food is thoroughly mediocre. Then they prompt you for a tip. The temple is great but avoid this scam restaurant.

This place serves mostly fresh vegetables (some were canned, I think). Although authentic enough, the different dishes that we ordered seemed to be very similar to each other. There are other better vegetarian restaurants in Richmond, and $ 15/​dish is not very appealing.

It was a toss-​up between Zen lunch for $ 15 per dish with rice, or Steveston and fish n chips. Glad we chose the Buddhist temple as the food is very thoughtfully prepared and tasty. The tofu skins wrapped around mushrooms was delightful. It’s a place to savour every bite instead of chowing down. The payment for lunch is dropped into a box labelled «donations.»

My friend and I decided to go for lunch to Taste of Zen mostly because of the excellent reviews that I’ve read here. It was nothing but a great disappointment for us.
First of all, we had to wait for an hour for our food to arrive. We ordered one dish and 3 dim sum dishes (though we actually wanted only one as we both do not eat to much, but waitress made us to order 3). We got the first dish, and they seem to forget our dimsum order. When we said that we actually have to go, they started to rush and brought us one of the dim sums and offered the others to go (no way they would have cancelled the order). We agreed and when we got back to work, the take out order was actually NOT what we originally ordered. We were under impression that the first priority for this place is to collect the money, but not to create good experience for customers.
As for the food, it was rather ordinary (not bad, but I cannot understand excellent reviews here as it was really nothing special). Also, 15 for a dish is pretty expensive.
Not going back there for sure.

I’ve been here 3 times so far. I must say this place serves the best vegetarian food ever! I’ve not had a dish that I’m disappointed with here. Talking to the service staff (basically volunteers at the temple), I found out that the vegetables are sometimes from the vegetable gardens on the temple grounds. So it’s really fresh ingredients you are getting. Don’t forget to ask them what they have that is not on the menu that day.
As some of the earlier posters have explained, payment is by donation. Minimum is $ 15 per person. The main dishes are $ 15 each and the dim sum dishes at $ 5 each. Tea is included. They are closed on Mon & Tue. Parking is a breeze.

Located on the grounds of a beautifull Buddhist temple.
They are closed Monday & Tuesday. Hours are 11:30 — 3:00pm. Parking was easy in their large lot.
As you may surmise, the ambience was peaceful. The devinely decorated dining room was small yet ample.
The wait staff was friendly & attentive. They told us they were all volunteer temple members.
The menu was in Chinese only. So you may have to ask for recommendations.
We had Stuffed Eggplant, Wild Mushroom Taro Pastry, Egg Noodle Chow Mein, Udon Noodles with Veggy Balls, Radish Pastry, Green Bean Pastry & Tea.
All were so good! I loved them all! Especially the Stuffed Eggplant which was flavorful without being oily. The Wild Mushroom Taro Pastry & the other pastries were flaky & moist, also without being oily.
After visiting the inspiring grounds & eating the devine food I felt on the right path to enlightment…:-)