Ovolo Hotels, which operates hotels, restaurants and bars across Australia and Hong Kong, is going completely vegetarian in 2020.
It’s not permanent – just for one year, except for the hotel restaurants already permanently vegan or vegetarian.
The company is calling it an “initiative”, but that is corporate-speak for a trial run. If guests love it, it could be come permanent, at least in some of the company’s destinations.
Ovolo Hotels is calling it “The Year of the Veg,” as the veggie menus launch in 2020.
The chain’s Australian venues that will go vegetarian for one year include:
Monster Kitchen & Bar at Nishi in Canberra, where new Executive Chef, Paul Wilson, will incorporate his experience in internationally renowned kitchens such as Copenhagen’s Geranium to create a refined vegetable-forward menu;
ZA ZA TA at The Valley in Brisbane, helmed by Israeli-born chef Roy Ner, formerly of Nour and Lilah in Sydney;
Mister Percy at 1888 Darling Harbour in Sydney, which will be transformed into a vegetarian Italian wine bar.
At Woolloomooloo, Australia and New Zealand’s first vegan hotel restaurant Alibi Bar & Kitchen will continue its collaboration with global plant-based pioneer, Matthew Kenney, as Creative Culinary Partner.
Veda at Ovolo Central was Hong Kong’s very first vegetarian hotel restaurant. Now, Komune, the lively all-day dining destination at Southside, is cutting meat from its menus, and the hotel will soon debut an exciting new restaurant concept that will be fully vegetarian as well.
In a press release, company Founder and CEO Girish Jhunjhnuwala said,
“Dining out and enjoying tasty food and wine with great company is one of life’s simplest pleasures. Good times and good intentions are how we’re evolving. We want to be conscious about what we are consuming and practice environmental sustainability as best as we can, as this leads to a larger impact on humanity, not just the environment.”
More Environmental Inititiatives
In that same press release, the company said it is “Committed to continuously finding ways to further reduce its environmental footprint, Ovolo’s move towards completely vegetarian restaurants and “ethical eating”, along with several other eco-friendly initiatives already implemented recently.
These include elimination of all single-use plastic bathroom amenities and using re-fillable, tamper-free pump bottles that are HDPE recyclable.
In addition to this, Ovolo had previously eliminated single-use plastic straws, introduced reusable woven bags for slippers, and moved to using biodegradable materials in all laundry bags and packaging across all properties in its portfolio.
Click here or more information about hotels and the one year vegetarian restaurant experiment in Australia and Hong Kong.
ecoXplorer Evelyn Kanter is a journalist with 20+ years of experience as a newspaper and magazine writer, radio & TV news producer & reporter, and guidebook and smartphone app author – all focusing on travel, automotive, the environment and your rights as a consumer.
Contact me at evelyn@ecoxplorer.com.
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