Vegetables served cold and badly at meat prices.

China is possibly the world's best place for healthy, tasty vegan food. Go into any half-decent Chinese restaurant and they'll offer you dozens of excellent vegan dishes for about a third of the price of The Veggie Table. Naturally, on food, service and price, The Veggie Table just doesn't stand up to the competition.

The food is small and not particularly inventive. Most of the dishes are "fake meat", "fake cheese", and "fake coleslaw" rather than a natural celebration of delicious vegetables. The food is not filling: not from a lack of meat, but because it's small, cold and flavourless. By comparison, the vegetarian Chinese restaurant just 300m to the west of this one (in the opposite hutong) has a much better selection of dishes (and is always crowded).

The service is bizarre. They told us the wrong subway exit multiple times on the telephone then met us with a mixture of surprise and confusion when we asked to sit down. I felt unwelcome.

We paid an extortionate 90 yuan per person (120 with drinks). For half that price, you could order vegetable-based food from any reputable restaurant and ask them to, "make sure it's vegan". There are many great restaurants in Beijing (especially the one I mentioned above), and most of them would comply. I left The Veggie Table feeling ripped off and hungry, and ate ¥8 noodles on the way home.

The furniture is not vegan. The sofas are so deep and soft that they'll swallow any human being who sits on them. I can't eat lying down. Going to this restaurant was quite an unpleasant experience.

I love vegan food. I cook and eat vegan food at home every day. Recipes that disguise vegetables as meat are destined to disappoint. Vegetables should be hot, cheap, tasty and filling without looking like meat, and that's a skill that The Veggie Table has failed to master.