品嚐上海福和慧素食餐廳 Fu He Hui Shanghai

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.

福和慧素食餐廳(Fu He Hui)清幽靜謐，隱身於上海車水馬龍、喧囂嘈雜的鬧市區。我們悄然進入位於昔日公共租界(International Settlement)的一幢現代風格建築後，服務員把我們帶至樓上的素餐廳，這兒的幽靜私密包間幾乎清一色用日式極簡主義風格打造。深色木質餐桌沒鋪任何桌布，格子圖案的屏風把各個包間彼此隔開。包間裏靠牆的中式案几上放着一束蘭花，牆上則掛着一幅風格含蓄的當代藝術作品。我們點了兩份當天的套餐，這樣就可以儘可能嚐遍美味佳餚。

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.

店方的幾道美味點心清爽開胃。首先是裝滿了鱷梨、芒果以及西紅柿小塊的黑色錐形脆筒：這道點心稀鬆平常，唯一不同的是錐形脆筒由產自中國東部城市寧波的特色美味紫菜乾做成。小份量的“三品”因應了佛教的素餐觀：“糖醋排骨”由插入蓮藕的一截李子、壓成寶葫蘆(calabash gourd)樣的素雞以及裹着一把馬蘭頭的豆腐皮做成。兩份湯清淡素雅：放了龍眼和木瓜的核桃仁湯與飄着竹蓀的松茸湯讓人回味無窮。

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.

福和慧是繼上海久負盛名的福1015、福1088以及福1039餐廳後，該餐飲集團最新開設的一家素食餐廳，它由上海最知名的大廚盧懌明(Tony Lu)主理。去年，它與姐妹餐廳福1015同時入選聖培露(San Pellegrino)評選的“亞洲50家最佳餐廳”(Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants)名錄，位列第19位，它們是中國大陸入選該名單屈指可數的餐廳。

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，當福餐飲集團(Fu group)旗下的其它餐廳專注於傳統精緻菜餚時，福和慧則另闢蹊徑、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.

戴着深框眼鏡的盧懌明既深沉又不苟言笑，一副翩翩學者的風度，雖說一本正經的他偶爾也會開懷大笑。他1976年出生於上海本地，剛入餐飲業時，粵菜是當時最爲風靡的菜系。盧懌明選擇這個行當，並非出於個人喜好；與多數中國廚師一樣，他入行只是因爲自己沒能上大學。

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?”

當我問他是否喜歡自己的學徒生涯時，他笑了。“我一開始的工作就是清洗鴨子、處理下水，乾的都是些髒活累活。我當時19歲，每天師傅都會打罵我，這大大傷及我的自尊心。”他說，“你說哪個人會喜歡這種生活？”

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.

他說自己花了5、6年時間才真正開竅。2005年，他以顧問身份加入福餐飲集團，幾年後榮升爲總廚師長。

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.

盧懌明說福餐飲集團老闆方元(Fang Yuan)是虔誠的佛教徒，開設一家素餐廳是其多年的夙願。他們兩人最初想推寺廟傳統素齋。中國的佛寺素齋花樣繁多、歷史悠久，大型寺廟通常開設有素齋館，遊客可以品嚐到由素食精製而成的各種“魚肉”大餐。舉個例子，遊客可以到離福和慧不到一英里的玉佛寺(Jade Buddha Temple)素齋餐廳品嚐由豆腐、素排骨做成的“素烤鴨”、“素火腿”以及“素炒蟹粉”。尤其是炒蟹粉(stir-fried crabmeat)，儼然是餐飲藝術的傑作：它由土豆泥、胡蘿蔔以及蛋清加入薑絲爆炒而成，色香味俱濃。

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.”

但當方元與盧懌明準備開設福和慧素食餐廳時，他們又有了完全不同的想法。“我們當時認爲沒必要挖空心思把所有菜餚都做成肉食模樣。”盧懌明回憶道，“舉個例子，我們曾希望打造由‘肉皮’、‘膘’以及‘瘦肉’構成的五花肉，最後我們決心另闢蹊徑。”看到當時中國的素齋餐飲行業停滯不前，盧懌明與方元頗感沮喪，而當時食素餐的理念開始興起。“前溯20年，中國的素餐業幾乎是原地踏步走，原因是沒人真心實意推行，甚至上海也是如此，形形色色的菜系匯聚於此，可謂應有盡有。”他說，“很多傳統素餐過度加工，過多使用食用油以及超量添加味精，目的就是爲了增鮮。”

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.

從歷史上看，中國人食用素餐的觀念與西方大相徑庭。完全吃素與佛教緊密關聯，寺院外的遵行者鳳毛麟角。但是，偶爾吃素的現象比比皆是。中國很多佛教居士在某些特殊日子（如赴當地寺廟進香獻祭時）禁用肉食；他們平時則不忌肉食。在中國歷史上，吃素一直被視爲某些文人墨客所選擇的清淡生活的一種方式，如14世紀的詩人林鴻(Lin Hong)，他的著作Pure Offerings of a Mountain Hermit中就收錄了很多素餐烹製法；再說了，大多數中國人過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，如果說中國人比美國人吃肉要少得多屬於常態，那麼完全忌肉則被視爲匪夷所思之舉。中國人往往把自己食素的習慣稱作“吃素”，它與西方人腦海中的素食理念截然不同。甚至福和慧素食餐廳的老闆偶爾也吃肉。“當然，方元並非完完全全的素食者。”盧懌明說，“這也正是中國社會的一大特色！”

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.

福和慧素食餐廳並無點菜之說，只需選擇每天提供的套餐（每位價位380元-880元，約合40-95英鎊）——這樣的素餐價位令人咋舌。但食用素餐越來越受到中國知識分子階層的青睞，方元和盧懌明相信在上海這座中國最爲發達的城市，高檔素餐館的前景一片光明。

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.

除了異常開胃的素燒排骨以及白靈菇(mushroom cutlet)這兩道菜外，福和慧的午餐套餐單上再無其它“假肉菜”了。我們津津有味地享用了一道道由東西方食材以及烹製法做成的美味佳餚。淋着紅燒湯汁、撒着芝麻粒的茄子爽脆卷美侖美奐；擺成陰陽圖案造型、上用雞樅菌點綴的雙色（紫色與白色）山藥泥；放在黑亮南瓜形器皿中、松露與牛蒡點綴的方塊形綠豆豆腐；清炒素菜（由百合、銀杏果、榆樹木耳以及蘆筍等組成）；以及一片放在薄煎餅上的烤杏鮑菇片（配有脆豆腐皮、黃瓜以及發酵的豆瓣醬，像北京烤鴨似地把它們捲起來享用）；美不勝收的燴飯中加入了上海人最愛吃的蔬菜——薺菜，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.”

對於盧懌明這種習慣於烹製肉食以及用各種存備貨、醃火腿以及幹海鮮的上海本地廚師來說，開天闢地嘗試全素餐是巨大的挑戰。“一般說來，廚師可以隨心所欲使用各種食材。”他說，“但是，這就好比寫一篇指定題材的文章——使用的食材非常有限，因此廚師必須發揮自己最好的廚藝想象力。”

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.

儘管他本人越來越青睞素食主義理念，但他仍時常吃肉。“但一言以蔽之，本人對吃一點都不感興趣。”他一本正經地說道。儘管盧懌明推出的素餐美不勝收，但他堅稱白米飯仍是自己的最愛。