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Long Life Vegi House
Categories: Restaurants Chinese Restaurants Vegetarian Chinese, Vegetarian [Edit]
2129 University Ave(between Shattuck Ave & Walnut St)
Berkeley, CA 94704
Neighborhoods: UC Campus Area, Downtown Berkeley
(510) 845-6072
- Price Range:
-
$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Wi-Fi:
- No
- Good For:
- Lunch, Dinner
- Alcohol:
- Beer & Wine Only
- Noise Level:
- Quiet
- Ambience:
- Casual
- Has TV:
- No
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
221 reviews for Long Life Vegi House
Review Highlights
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"The hot and sour soup is wonderful." In 28 reviews -
"The food was great, really good fake meat." In 25 reviews -
"...had the eggplant in spicy garlic sauce, the kung pao veggie..." In 10 reviews
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- A Yelpy Insight: Vegetarians go nuts for this spot. See more places they like.
221 reviews in English
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Review from Patrick T.
Burbank, CA
Veggie meat? Would that even taste good? Actually.... YEA IT DOES!!!! Or well at least at long life :D
I always pass this place on my way home because it's right below my apt building, yet after living there for almost a year I didn't once think about ever eating here cause from the outside it looked really ghetto and sketchy. Now finally visiting this place about a month ago I can't believe I never went here sooner. Long life literally has lunch specials that are flat $5 or $6 (for seafood) and made extremely fast. At first I didn't know what I was gettin into since everything on the menu said vegi-meat, but I heard that it was really good and it actually tasted like meat just without the fat XP
The lunch special is SUPER filling because of the amount of delicious brown rice and I eat alot.
So far I've tried:
Szechuan Vegi-beef - The sauce is pretty good and had good meat to rice ratio
Kung Pao Vegi-chicken - Good but not spicy enough even when I told them to make it spicy
Mongolian Vegi-beef - ^ Same as Kung Pao chicken
Honey Walnut Shrimp - Only 6 or 7 shrimp but it tastes amazingly sweet and yummy and I used the sauce with my rice with made that much enjoyable
Overall, I love this place because its so cheap and fast and because the lunch special goes until 5:00 EVERYDAY. -
Review from Adele F.
Lightning fast service. $5 lunch specials. Huge portions. Good vegi chicken. Not so good vegi beef. Icky egg roll.
7 days a week, from 11:30 AM - 5:30 PM, they offer their Vegetarian Rice Plate for $4.55 + tax, which comes to $5 EXACTLY. Our bill was, literally, TEN BUCKS.
This daily rice plate luncheon special includes soup of the day, spring roll, and entree with brown rice. To Go doesn't include the soup, and orders after 3 PM don't include the spring roll.
I ordered the BROCCOLI VEGI-CHICKEN, and my friend ordered the BROCCOLI VEGI-BEEF. We're ambitious, aren't we.
Food came out in TWO MINUTES. We took about 15 minutes to eat. Then we realized we had class in 7 minutes, so we asked for the check. 30 seconds, BAM. 2 to-go boxes and our check plus fortune cookies. We packed up and bolted out the door for class.
We got hot & sour soup, and I liked the tofu strips. The spring roll is NASTY. It tasted like rubber, no joke. Blarrrgghh. The brown rice was yummy!
Both entrees came with plentiful broccoli and carrots, but not enough faux meat in my opinion. The vegi-chicken was good though! Both vegi-meats are flat square shaped, since they're chopped from a huge block of vegi-meat. The vegi-chicken imitated chicken pretty well, although it was obvious that it was NOT chicken. But the texture was interesting, and it was enjoyably edible!
I didn't think the broccoli vegi-beef was that good though. It tasted too tofu/soy-y, and the texture was rougher than the vegi-chicken, in order to imitate the toughness of beef.
Spacious layout with a high ceiling and good sunlight. Plentiful seating!
Five dollars that paid for my lunch AND my dinner, so you're getting some large portions! If you want cheap meat dishes, go to May Flower Chinese Restaurant, but if you're craving some cheap fake meat dishes, come here! If you want snail slow service, go to May Flower, but if you want fast service, come here! I recommend the vegi-chicken over the vegi-beef, hands down!Listed in: Berkeley Budgeting
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Review from Galina G.
Walnut Creek, CA
2/29/2012
I'm a vegetarian and I decided to check this place out based on some reviews. Some were positive, others less so.
The decor was not good. It was dingy. I think that if the owners scrubbed, painted and updated (removed that horrible huge fake shark hanging on the wall for one) it would help them to attract more clients. The bathrooms were in plain view but sort of separated by a weird trench-type structure. Hard to explain but it basically part of the main floor.
What I had: veg. sizzling soup. Just average. No tofu, just couple of mushrooms floating around. Tofu Clay Pot: no flavor at all, don't get this dish. Pieces of fried tofu and soggy bok choy in super hot broth with no flavor.
Veg. chicken with broccoli: pretty good, maybe would get this one dish as takeout if were ever in the area again.
Berkeley is blessed with so many veg. options that I highly doubt I will ever be back to Long Life; not for main seating for sure, but if I was ever famished and everything else fell victim to mysterious closure and I had no other choice then of course!
.
Hope they update and refresh their dingy dining area.
Good luck! -
Review from H Nicole A.
San Lorenzo, CA
4/9/2012
Yes it is dingy, no linen tablecloths, etc but the restrooms were clean. This place is just yards from the UC campus and I am told it is a favorite among students for healthy and cheap food.
I am a vegan but don't go in for the fake meat substitutes so I ordered sauteed Eggplant and brown. The portions were huge, really enough for two people. I was famished so I finished it all but there was really enough for two meals. -
Review from Jeremy G.
Updated - 4/16/2012 2 Check-ins Here
Came back and fell in love with the BBQ Chinese Tofu.
1 Previous Review: Show all »
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1/29/2012
I am quite conflicted about this place. After reading Brian G's review, I felt compelled to make my… Read more »
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Review from Marlene M.
Oakland, CA
4/23/2012
This restaurant is so close to me, and I love Chinese food. But I probably won't go back. I just didn't like most of the 5 or 6 dishes I tried. For a restaurant, what's more important? Their sauces and soups were bland. (I don't like really spicy food, so didn't order those, but I do like flavor!) I'm not a vegetarian but generally like vegetarian food. Not here. The vegi "beef" was pretty bad. Spring rolls overcooked and hard outside, uninteresting inside. The one dish that I liked was egg foo young, which I don't usually order but felt inspired this day, and was pleasantly surprised. Generally, portion sizes were good and prices were reasonable. Given that the reviews vary from two stars to five stars, I'm thinking there might be more than one cook, with varying culinary skills. Their menu items sound tasty; wish the food lived up to my expectations.
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Review from Pseudonymous B.
Berkeley, CA
2/16/2012
This is my favorite place to get lunch when I'm at Berkeley. Like many other Chinese vegetarian restaurants, Long Life Vegi House focuses on gluten and soy meat substitutes. They also have some tofu and some purely vegetable dishes, but I haven't liked those as much. They also have some seafood on the menu, but I would never order that so I'll ignore it. The reason I like this place so much is the lunch special, which pushes up from four stars to five in my book. Five dollars (including tax) gets a lunch item, rice, and an egg roll. When eating in, it includes soup. I've only gotten food to go, so I've never tried the soup. It would be nice if they included it. I know they have suitable containers. The lunch special is more than enough food more a lunch. It never leaves me hungry.
The food is a mix of different regions of Chinese food, and not all of it excellent. My favorite thing they make is their kung pow vegi-chicken. However, I don't like their ma po tofu at all, even though it is another Sichuanese dish and one of my favorites food when made well. They also have stir-fries that are more typical of Cantonese cooking. There are also a few Americanized and foreign-influenced items mixed in. While I don't like everything they make, I really like the stuff that I do like. Both the vegi-chicken and the vegi-beef are very good - better than any of the imitators that I've tried to make. However, I don't like the tofu in any of their dishes that I've tried. Some of their choices for the lunch specials are baffling. There are cases where they have two very similar items on their full menu, but only one is available as a lunch special.
This is an ideal place to get lunch. When I order a lunch special to go, they have it ready within a few minutes. The people who run the place are nice, and they sometimes have their kids there with them. However, sometimes the person who they have running the register doesn't speak English quite well enough to be taking orders. All in all, this is one of my favorite restaurants around, and I usually come here each week. -
Review from Brian G.
1/6/2012
My favorite lunch spot. I'm going to say this slowly. FIVE. DOLLAR. LUNCH. SPECIAL. tax included ya'll.
6 days a week from opening until 5pm you get soup, spring roll (until 3pm), and a bigass entree over brown rice for 5 bucks. The food is excellent. The service is excellent. I always have to pee when I get home because my water glass is never empty. Oh and you're food comes out in like, 2 minutes, it's insane.
Don't all you be stealin mah spot though!Listed in: Vegan East Bay
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Review from Juana S.
Service: 5 stars all the way
I LOVE Long Life Veggie :) it's definitely one of my favorite places to eat super casual and chill.
Favorites: Salt & pepper fish, hot & sour soup, spring rolls.
Salt & peeper fish: Yummy, it's thinly baked and with salty goodness.
Spring rolls: Fresh and ready in a few minutes.
I have been coming here for the past 4 years and I have really loved everything on the menu. Only thing I have noticed is the hot & sour soup is not as thick in consistency as it once was, however Long Life Veggie House still has one of the best hot & sour soups I've tried.
I have had the veggie chicken and I love it here. I try and order other stuff from the menu but I always come back to my top 3 favorites. -
Review from L D.
Hercules, CA
3/10/2012
Inexpensive and quick. The food is okay but the place needs a makeover. The guy sitting across from us had a veggie rice dish that looked fabulous. The air circulating fans are caked on with dust and needs a cleaning.
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Review from Tara G.
San Francisco, CA
4/8/2012
Oh my god - TERRIBLE. So terrible that my husband and I threw out our entire bag of takeout. The only thing we could get through were the spring rolls. Everything else was just awful. The fake meat was absolutely disgusting. No flavor whatsoever. Most of it was deep fried to give it some flavor--but neither one of us like fried food.
Coming from NJ and NY, where there are a lot of incredible chinese vegetarian restaurants (Veggie Heaven in NJ, anyone?), the poor quality of this food was amplified.
Cheap does not mean good, people! Do not bother going here. -
Review from Sam Marie G.
San Francisco, CA
12/8/2011 3 Check-ins Here
I've been coming to Long Life for years and years. Even before I lived in the bay area it was always a place I would frequent if I'd found myself in Berkeley.
First off, cheap deals for lunch and dinner alike. My boyfriend and I usually order two dishes and rice to share and always have leftovers for a few days. Great value!
The fake meat is good quality. The veggie orange chicken and veggie cashew chicken are some of my faves, although I've recently fallen in love with the sesame veggie beef too. Those aside, almost every plate of food I've seen come out of that kitchen has looked tasty.
There are some fish options on the menu, which can be confusing for a vegetarian restaurant.. so make sure you specify that you want the veggie versions of a dish! -
Review from Kalimah P.
Berkeley, CA
2/13/2012
Next to Ark Chinese Restaurant, this place has become my favorite Chinese veggie locale since moving to Berkeley from Oakland. Their menu is complete with all sorts of soy/tofu/fake meat substitutes and though the atmosphere isn't the most modern, they more than make up for it with the low pricing of meals. For a first time experience, I recommend the veggie orange chicken.
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Review from S P.
Berkeley, CA
4/8/2012
BEST veggie meat in the country. And, fastest service of any restaurant I've been to in the world. Also, super affordable. What more can you ask for from a place? I highly recommend the vegi-chicken with black mushrooms!
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Review from Lily E.
San Francisco, CA
1/16/2012
I live in the City but would meet my friend for dinner here on more than one occasion. Everything's faux-meat and nomtastic as fuck. I recommend any of the vegi-chicken or bean curd dishes, my favorite is the black mushroom. Zucchini, carrots, AND black mushrooms? Are you fucking kidding me? Please, more, and thank you. Check please. Four blocks to friend's house. Collapse into a food coma. Rinse wash repeat.
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Review from Nat A.
San Francisco, CA
12/14/2011
What I love about this place is that it's vegetarian, and offers some of the best Asian vegetarian fare in the area. The staff is so friendly, and the prices are great for the Cal students next door.
My recommendations are the Long Life chow mien and orange chicken. -
Review from Kathy K.
San Francisco, CA
8/4/2011
It is with great sadness that I must report that this place sucks. I used to love coming here 10 years ago when I lived in Berkeley. I just moved back to the area and thought I'd see if it was as good as I remembered.
I knew things were not going to be good when the tea brought to the table had no tea leaves or a tea bag and was lukewarm "tea water" with no flavor.
I wanted to order the scallops with garlic sauce, but for some reason the waiter said we could only order scallops with green beans. Okay, fine. What arrived were scallops cut in half. Really? You can't put a whole scallop in the dish. There were about 5 half scallops in the whole dish and the green beans were shriveled and rotten looking.
The rice tasted like it had been cooked a week before and arrived at room temperature. From there things kept going downhill.
I'll spare you the details, but its safe to say their compromising taste and hygiene in favor of saving some money.
AVOID! -
Review from Stephanie R.
Berkeley, CA
9/17/2011
My favourite food place in Berkeley.
One of my most stated phrases is probably, "Have you been to Long Life Vegi House?!" This comes up mainly when I am having discussions on the topic of: restaurants, cool places around town, vegetarianism, things I love, rice, great deals, current events, music, travel, Europe, television, rhinoceroses, plaid, bicycles, US presidents, plimsolls, alphabetising... I will make any convo about LLVH!
Their lunch specials (every weekday [minus Tuesday] from 11-5) include (prepare yourself): tea, soup, spring roll, tons of brown rice, yummy food enough for two (meals or people), and a fortune cookie- $4.95! oh, and water, if you weren't already convinced.
And it is such a good deal in general- I can't emphasis this enough. Even at dinner, I went with a group of 8 once and we must of ended up with a bill of $40 total, and we all were stuffed and joyous.
My favourite fake meats are the sweet & sour pork and the orange chicken (dinner dishes around $7) Their vegetables are yum too ($6/7). I also very much enjoy their fried rice ($5/6).
Long Live the Vegi House! -
Review from Suzee Q.
Fresno, CA
8/30/2011
This is one of my favorite restaurants ever. I order the exact same thing here everytime: Sizzling rice soup with vegetables, Veggie Potstickers, Lemon Chicken and Veggie Chicken Fried Rice. They give complementary tea and purified water--nice! Total for all that (which stuffs 2 people and we still have leftovers) is about $18 before tip. Cheap!! They also serve real seafood here. It can be hard to understand the workers sometimes but they are so friendly!
My anti-vegan mom was starving after we picked her up from the airport and so we gave her our leftovers. She yelled "this is real chicken!" We argued the whole way home that it was NOT real chicken. I guess that should tell you right there that this fake meat is good quality and tastes just like the real thing! Anything fried tastes good--even the fake meat :) -
Review from Stephen O.
Berkeley, CA
2/2/2011
I live with a bunch of vegans, and they absolutely swear by this place. I'm of a different mindset. This is one of those rare instances where eating non-vegitarian food would actually be healthier. Everything's slathered in sauce and tastes more or less like everything else.
On the other hand, it's cheap. I'll give it that. -
Review from Sharee g.
1/4/2011 1 Check-in Here
Granted I've had this place bookmarked. But I didn't intend to go so soon.
My intent was to go to another spot. But they were closed for the holiday. Booooooo. So me and Ashley M. decided to go here. We were both newbies, but knew that since Eryka V, had been here and gave it two thumbs up. We knew that we wouldn't be disappointed.
I ordered the veggie beef and broccoli with brown rice.
Yum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But at first I was like, wait hold up this is veggie beef? Right!? Cause it sure looked like REAL beef and broccoli. (forgot to take a pic) Fooled me. Hahaha.It sure was good. I didn't miss the real thing at all.
We ordered some combe buns. That were crunchy on the outside, and soft and yummy on the inside. Forgive me for not knowing exactly what they were but it sure was good! LOL!
I'll definitely be back, considering I'm slowly but surely converting over to the veggie side. I can add this restaurant to my list of veggie friendly restaurants. Oh I forgot tell you it was cheap too! -
Review from Eryka V.
Oakland, CA
12/21/2010
Long Life Vegi House has me and my lady addicted since the first taste. It's so tasty it has us calling in to go orders from Oakland, and us rolling fast to pick up our warm heaven in a bag. This is the best comfort Americanized Chinese food I've ever devoured. TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) is braised with so much deliciousness it's ridiculous to visit any other similar joints. This place has been around for more than 20 years slangin' TVP ain't nothing fake about Long Life Vegi House but the meat baby. This is some double lip licking food. Orange Chicken made to order, crunchy, hot, orange sauce so good you will slurp it on its own. Beef Broccoli piping hot, marinated TVP oozing in comfort goodness, no skimping on the broccoli either. Whatever your comfort Chinese choice is they got and they got it good!
Movie night? Hungover? Craving greasy Chinese? On a budget? Vegetarian? Get yourself over here trust and believe. -
Review from Cynthia W.
Berkeley, CA
12/26/2011
My husband and I planned to have Chinese food for Christmas dinner this year. We called a few places, none of which take reservations. In going to several places lines were out the door and down the street. We settled on Lone Life Vegi House. The decor is blah to creepy-not so clean. People were having an okay time...we ordered the "Special Dinner" for two. We were shocked. It was the worst food either of us had ever tasted. Inedible. Egg flower soup had a chemical taste. I counted 4 peas and 6 small dices of carrot. And one shrimp. Vegi Mu Shu (except for sauce and pancakes-which I am sure came from another source) was like cabbage leftovers in a morass of not identifiable glob. Sweet and Sour Fish-not cooked terrible batter-even the green onion pancakes were a glutenous mass. Awful.
Too bad, we had eaten there before and it was okay. Do not go there. -
Review from Gabrielle T.
Oakland, CA
1/19/2011
Just... Gross.
My boyfriend's chow mein was incredibly greasy, and my rice was dry, making me wish I could somehow combine the two to make a decent meal. The tofu that I ordered was positively disgusting... It was like some steaming, melted situation that I couldn't even try to deal with. When I broke it in half, instead of two pieces of tofu being on my plate, there was like one conjoined, freakshow piece with the innards spilling in between.
If it sounds nasty to read, just imagine it staring back at you from your dinner plate that you most obviously paid too much for. -
Review from Carrie G.
San Rafael, CA
4/15/2011
This place has great crab cheese wontons. The part that confused me is that they have regular meat things on the menu, but also the vegi stuff. It's confusing. Like, are we sure we are actually eating vegi beef or is it real beef?
I would have given this place 4 stars if there wasn't so much sauce on every thing we ordered! First couple bites were good, then it was just way too saucey. Kung pao vegi beef was delicious though.Vegi orange chicken had way too much batter on it, I would have liked less batter or more tofu (is that what it is?).
Regardless, I am not a vegetarian, so I can't really compare this to meat subs since I haven't had them anywhere else. But I would return here to try the rest of the food. Or maybe just to eat all the crab cheese wontons. Yum! -
Review from Rose L.
San Francisco, CA
7/14/2011 1 photo
It's my second time going to this place and I must say I love it!
The price is extremely cheap and don't think because it's cheap the place doesn't offer good food, cause it does!
For the two times I ate there, we got started off w/ this veggie and tofu soup that is a bit spicy. Although, i'm not much of a spice girl, I like the soup especially when you have a runny nose it helps. Haha.
Anyway, the last time I went, I got the pot sticker (veggie stuffing) 6pieces for $4 something. The pot stickers were quite big, delicious, and very filling!
For those who will come across this restaurant and have not tried it, you should!
If you don't like it, hey you didn't lose too much since again the price is cheap! -
Review from sarah c.
Oakland, CA
1/5/2012
I have travelled all over the world on a shoestring budget eating street food indiscriminately and i have NEVER gotten sick from eating food. Unfortunately, my hitherto Bulletproof stomach gave way in the face of "lLong Life Vegi House"'s vile, putrid food. Avoid at all costs.
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Review from Joanna L.
Irvine, CA
4/22/2011
This place is a serious bargain. Their vegetarian noodle soup is $4.95!! It comes with a flavorful broth and generous servings of egg noodles, bok choy, cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, water chestnuts and some fake meat (kind of nondescript in kind... just savory like meat!) made from wheat gluten. It's just about the perfect noodle soup, except sometimes the shiitakes bring it down a notch. They use dried shiitakes, and sometimes the pieces aren't rehydrated enough so they have that weird dried, chewy shiitake taste.
I also like coming here because the staff is very nice, and their super cute kids are often hanging out at the big back table, snacking and watching Chinese TV shows. -
Review from Sarah J.
12/17/2010
I have only been a vegetarian for a year now but LLV is one of my favorite places for veg-Chinese food. Dishes you *must* try: sweet 'n sour pork, garlic eggplant, and potstickers. I also recommend the mongolian beef & chow mein. The chow mein's a little greasy but totally worth it.
The lunch special is the best deal in town-- especially since it's valid until 4 or 5 p.m. -
Review from Yoganshi S.
Berkeley, CA
4/17/2011
Oh well so thank you fellow yelpers. It was only due to your help did i step into this place. I would say that on first look the ambiance is Ok, its pretty dark, but the thing i love about it the most!! is that it vegetarian based (well not fully they do server REAL sea food so be careful there is no fake crab as i though it would be heheh) Although thats creepy to eat even if its fake crab hmmm...
Well anyhow i tried the veggie dish : spicy tofu with peanuts, water chestnuts and vegetables. It wasnt al that tasty but their spring rolls were
really good.
If you really want to make it worth your buck you should go for the lunch special where you get one soup, a spring roll and a en tree all for like 5 bucks. -
Review from Kevin L.
Berkeley, CA
2/4/2011 1 Check-in Here
WOAH THERE WOAH THERE ... vegetarian beef? Who has heard of such a thing? Well guess what, it's amazing! The meat substitues they use here are great. I really like their mushu appetizer too! The service was great and the PRICES ARE SO CHEAP! $4.55 for a full lunch combo? BOMB! Anyways the food is delicious, the service is friendly, the prices are great! This place is pretty much awesome. The only downside the service is pretty slow. During the 7pm peak dinner hour when I was there, they only had to waiters scurrying around trying to take care of 10+ tables. So -1 star for slow service. Cause having to wait 20 mins to pay the bill is not very fun.
Overall though, great place to try out and then become a regular cause it's so cheap! -
Review from Angie M.
Berkeley, CA
1/31/2011
They forgot to give me my soup in my lunch combo. -1 star
Otherwise, delicious vegetarian food that lasted my roommate and I several meals all for the cost of only $5-$7 each.
And yes, we only ordered 3 things. -
Review from Leila C.
Glendale, CA
7/3/2011
I have been coming to Long Life Vegi House since I was a little kid and I try to go there every time I'm in Berkeley. This is simply one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants in the state of California. Everything I order always tastes good. Their soy chicken is exceptional. The vegetables are always delicious. And I love that they serve tea with every meal. This place has cheap prices, too! I recommend Long Life Vegi House to anyone that loves asian vegetarian food.
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Review from Dustin B.
Berkeley, CA
2/20/2011
Vegetarian Chinese food that looks just as unhealthy as other Chinese food. Perfect for unhealthy vegetarians like myself right?
The food is okay. I ordered the garlic "chicken" and mongolian "beef." Meat looks real and everything pretty much tastes the same.
I haven't really had the best Chinese food ever, but this place is white noise to me, in terms of other Chinese foods. It serves it's purpose in filling me and it gets points for being vegetarian too!
You should check it out if you're in the area. -
Review from Johnny S.
Berkeley, CA
2/5/2012 1 Check-in Here
Just like any other Chinese restaurant in Berkeley (aside from Great China which unfortunately burned down)..I believe that's saying enough. But could be that I ordered the wrong dish but still. I got the tofu vegi rice dish and it was beyond miserable. The tofu was not cooked at all, and worst of all, it was stale and tasted like it was bought a week ago. There's nothing special about this place aside from being probably the only vegi-only chinese place.
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Review from Ha H.
Berkeley, CA
2/28/2011
This place is filled with your stereotypical traditional restaurant decor. With the glowing Chinese red lanterns in the window, I feel like I'm on the set of the Christmas Story movie where they get the roast duck for their Christmas meal after their own turkey has been devoured by dogs. Love that movie.
Long Life Vegi House is a little more grim, more cavernous like, and a little more depressing.
The food is yelps three star, A-OK. It's your Americanized Chinese grease treat without the meat. I ordered the Orange Chicken and hated it. Only because I really do not like over battered fried food. When there's so much batter that you can't actually taste the mock chicken, there's a problem. The other dish we ordered, Spicy Beef Tofu and Vegetable thing was really good. Really tasty. They have so many options that it'll be easy to avoid the battered to hell food next time. For the super cheap price and for being so close to our home, Long Life Vegi House, I'll be glad to try you again. -
Review from Mae S.
Berkeley, CA
Updated - 2/22/2011
After two midterms, all I really want is some tasty textured vegetable protein. There was also the promise of some delicious sweet and sour soup (thanks yelpers).
It's a Tuesday night, so it looked pretty slow. Decided to order the 'beef' and tofu in a spicy garlic sauce ($6.75) with a side of rice + hot and sour soup ($1.60). The hot and sour soup didn't come with the usual egg, but it didn't need it. It was so yummy, i almost licked the bowl clean. The beef and tofu was just as yummy--it came with sliced carrots, zucchini, onions, and bell pepper (all of which was really fresh, you can definitely tell).
My meal also came with some complementary tea. Also, the woman is no longer pregnant... I saw a cute baby in the back table. Such a nice family... great service, my glass of water was never more than half empty.
Dinners are served a la carte, so I always have lunch for the next day. Love this place! They also give you fortune cookies and sweet orange slices at the end of your meal!1 Previous Review: Show all »
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2/20/2011
I don't think that vegetarian has to mean healthy, snobby, and expensive. That's why I'm a fan of… Read more »
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Review from Wally W.
Santa Rosa, CA
12/8/2010 1 Check-in Here
All meat-less at this restaurant, but they do a really good job at it.
It's not tofu, but some kind of textured protein stuff.
$5 for a great lunch special that's fast and piping hot. Really good when you're in a rush. I had the Kung-Pao Vegi-Chicken and it was flavorful and the "chicken" had lots of flavor too, although it was in the shape of a cube. -
Review from Martin W.
Oakland, CA
12/1/2009 ROTD 11/23/2010
I do love me some Textured Vegetable Protein. Long Life Vegi House makes vegetarian Chinese food that's as greasy as the real thing--none of the ethical quandries, but with the unwholesome oils and sodium completely intact.
This used to be very important to me, because... I used to be a straight up vegetarian. A "lacto-ovo" vegetarian, for those keeping track (no meat, no fish, but dairy and eggs were OK).
Back then, my vegetarianism was motivated by guilt--I just couldn't countenance the slaughter of animals for my meals (as is surely evinced by my meat-filled reviews, I've since revisited that particular moral quandry), but I still loved the taste of meat.
The problem with vegetarianism *in* *general* is that the movement to not eat meat is frequently mistaken for the movement to eat healthily. When I quit eating meat, I found that vegetarian restaurants eschewed salts and fats--there was this whole thing about "whole grains" and "natural flavors" and all this other fucking bullshit, and what I wanted was something that tasted like sweet & sour pork that didn't have pork in it.
So, my early years of vegetarianism were pretty much a misery, a soul-destroying jaunt from one macrobiotic cess pool to another.
Until one day, I found Long Life.
Long Life Vegi House is a Chinese restaurant. No, I mean, like thick clouds of steam boiling out of the kitchen, pools of grease on the food, plastic chopsticks, and God bless their little hearts, Sriracha and pots of chili oil on the table (with fermented black beans, thank you very much).
Unlike some other vegetarian asian joints (which use gluten for fake meat, which is kind of like using a bath tub sponge), Long Life uses TVP. TVP accomplishes the admirable goal of *feeling* like meat in your mouth. It's got the right *texture,* you see?
Kung Pao Chicken. General Tso Chicken. Mu shu pork. Long Life serves up an American-style Chinese menu, but without meat.
Wait, they have fish. Hey, vegetarians--if the menu says something about fish, that's *actual* fish, not TVP fish! I told you! Don't say I didn't warn you!
I still love Long Life to this day, even tho I'll eat pretty much anything--pregnant condor, baby seal... whatever--because Long Life did me right. And their chili oil is the best in the Bay Area. -
Review from Tsada K.
Oakland, CA
7/6/2007
I love this place like an old friend.
This was the first place I ever ate at when I first came to the Bay Area many, many moons ago. I was a starry-eyed hippy kid and I remember being excited that there was a place where all the meat on the menu was vegetarian (save the seafood) and where the majority of the rice ordered was of the brown variety.
The food is not quite as good as Golden Lotus in Oakland, but it is still pretty tasty. I like the Chinese staples--hot and sour soup, wonton soup, spring rolls. Skip the chow mein. The fake meats are yummy, especially the chicken.
This place scores big points with me for being an institution, for living up to an idealistic kid's expectations of what Berkeley should be all about. But if you're not quite so sentimental , go anyway--the food's good.
