Mother Chu's Vegetarian Kitchen
A fixture of the city end of Pitt Street since 1992, this vegetarian kitchen predates almost every plant-based room in Sydney. The cooking is Taiwanese and Chinese Buddhist in lineage, built around house-made mock meats — soy and wheat-gluten 'duck', 'fish' and 'pork' — that arrive in claypots, hotpots and stir-fries with none of the novelty and all of the technique. Laksa, salt-and-pepper mushrooms and the crispy 'chicken' are long-standing favourites among a crowd that mixes CBD office workers, Buddhist regulars and curious first-timers. The room is plain and brightly lit, service is quick, and prices have stayed reasonable through three decades of rent rises around it. It remains one of the few genuinely old-guard vegetarian restaurants in central Sydney, and among the most reliable.