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Restaurant manager Steven Dong approaches the table with a large pair of scissors. “Wait,” he says. “I’m going to fillet it for you.” He stands over the large, flat platter before us and gently, deftly pushes vegetables off a flounder bathed in coconut gravy.

Carefully, deliberately, he starts snipping the flesh with scissors, working his way around the fins, cutting carefully alongside the spine. Tableside knifework is one of the great restaurant experiences: I love a bit of silver service. But this is different. This flounder needs no filleting. It has no bones. It isn’t, in fact, a fish at all.

I’m at Vegie Mum, a 21-year-old BYO restaurant in a charmingly old-fashioned strip of eastern suburban shops. The concept is Chinese fusion vegetarian cuisine, built around a long menu of mock meat dishes. In general, I’m not a fan of fake flesh. Why not just eat vegetables?

But there’s a grand tradition of make-believe in Chinese cuisine, largely attributable to Buddhist communities who eschewed meat but still wanted to honour guests with prestigious dishes such as pork, duck and seafood. Before Beyond Burgers were the merest twinkle in a lab technician’s eye, monks were making mock duck so realistic you could just about hear it quack.

Still, if you eat meat, you’d only bother with this if it was tasty as well as clever. At Vegie Mum, everything is made from scratch by chefs who’ve trained in meat cooking: the flavours are bold, the textures stand up and you can taste the joy in everything.

That “fish” is made from beancurd skin wrapped in seaweed, set in a fish-shaped mould, then deep-fried to make the seaweed “skin” crispy. It’s served like Thai tom kha gai, the coconut cream sauce fragrant with lemongrass and galangal.

Pork ribs are made with mushroom stalks, blended, seasoned then shaped into little sausages. They’re skewered and glazed in a Shanghai-style sweet-and-sour sauce, pungent with black vinegar. I don’t know how, but the mushroom meat is succulent and toothsome, layered as though with real pork fat.

There are various riffs on beef, too: cubed “steak” made from soy protein is wokked with basil, broccoli and cauliflower to create a bright, bountiful stir-fry.

We were happily steered towards the “ecstasy rice”, a huge pile of fried rice laced with prawn-free prawns, but there are straight-up vegetable dishes, too.

A generous stir-fry of bok choy and a variety of mushrooms and fungus is glistening, rich and hearty.

Vegie Mum is beloved for dine-in and takeaway, and you’ll generally need to book in the evenings. Mr Dong is a cheerful presence, filleting with aplomb, recommending with passion, standing behind his product with understandable pride. If he comes towards you with scissors, be not concerned: deliciousness is about to be portioned.