NEW LEAVES
First there was the counter meal era. Then came the big-name chefs. Circa 2021, plant-based eating is the next big thing in hotel dining. MAX VEENHUYZEN checks in with the movement’s ringleaders.
It’s Friday night at the Pan-Pacific Perth and the lobby bar is finding its voice. Behind me, a party of four is double-parked with cocktails. On the other side of the room, a table of eight is slowly being populated by twentysomethings who arrive one after the other and in pairs, Noah’s Ark-style. There’s not a bar of muzak to be heard on the high-energy, high-volume soundtrack. It’s a scene one might find anywhere in the Perth CBD, if not for one key difference: tonight, the lobby bar has been transformed into Ten Acre Block, a pop-up vegan restaurant, the appeal of which extends well beyond in-house guests. It’s a place that serves slices of Mary Street Bakery bread with comforting whipped tofu; that arranges rounds of roasted Warren Grange delicata squash atop a thrilling mole poblano; where bartenders render whisky sours glossy using aquafaba rather than egg white. More importantly, it’s a place that draws a crowd.
“This is a space that’s committed to the vegan community and plant-based dining,” says Alejandro Saravia, the hotel’s Peruvian-born executive chef. Initially introduced in October as a three-month pop-up, Ten Acre Block is now a permanent part of the Pan Pacific’s food and beverage offering. “We only cook with plants and vegetables: no processed vegan meat or cheese. We also decided the restaurant needed its own space and kitchen to reduce cross-contamination [with non-vegan food] and so guests don’t have to eat with the smell of steak in the air.”
On paper, the idea of a hotel flipping one of its main venues into a vegan restaurant on Fridays and Saturdays might seem unusual at best, financial suicide at worst. But the move speaks clearly to the growing popularity of plant-based eating and drinking. (While Australia no longer leads the world in the number of Google searches for “vegan”, Google Trends still ranks us in the top three along with the United Kingdom and New Zealand). The fact that veganism has infiltrated the traditionally conservative world of hotel dining only reaffirms the trend is no flash in the pan.
It’s a statement given further weight with the April opening of Lona Misa, an all-vegan restaurant at the new Ovolo South Yarra in Melbourne and a contender for one of the year’s most exciting debuts. In typical Ovolo style, Lona Misa is full of surprises, from its colourful, mid-century aesthetic to the involvement of journeyman Melbourne cook Ian Curley, the British chef behind
“People were impressed they could come in and weren’t just given a dry leaf salad or mushroom risotto.”
the (decidedly un-vegan) Butcher’s Diner. Joining Curley in driving the menu, however, is vegan firebrand Shannon Martinez.
In a neat throwback to the early days of Martinez’s trailblazing Smith & Daughters eatery in Fitzroy, Lona Misa’s menu riffs hard on her Spanish heritage, with guests tucking into everything from padrón-spiked croquettes to bloodless blood sausages. While Martinez is no stranger to causing a stir (let’s take a moment to meditate on her vegan doughnuts), even she was surprised by Lona Misa: not just its success, but the boldness of its concept.
“No fucking way could I imagine doing anything like this five years ago,” says Martinez. “No fucking way.”
While the appointment of Martinez has given Lona Misa cachet, the Ovolo group has a history of pushing the plant-based dining barrow. Outside of its October announcement that all Ovolo hotel restaurants in Hong Kong and Australia would be going vegetarian for a year – its Australian holdings include Monster Kitchen and Bar in Canberra, and ZA ZA TA in Brisbane – Alibi, the in-house restaurant of Ovolo Woolloomooloo, became Australia’s first vegan hotel restaurant when it opened in 2018.
While not all hotels have committed full-time to plant-based eating, many have flirted with veganism and vegetarianism with pleasing results. At Brisbane’s Calile Hotel, Hellenika’s vast spread of veg dishes elegantly refutes Greek cooking’s reputation for carnivorousness. At COMO The Treasury in Perth, the long-standing vegan crushed avocado toast doppelgänger remains one of Post restaurant’s best-sellers.
Thomas Gorringe, head chef of The Gantry at Pier One Sydney Harbour, remembers a time when the kitchen would freestyle dishes for vegan guests using existing prep and works-in-progress. After taking over the kitchen in 2018, he decided it was time he formalised the offering and introduced a vegan tasting menu as well as vegan in-room dining options and bar snacks.
“Having a dedicated vegan menu has been so much better,” says Gorringe. “Everyone in the kitchen knows what they’re doing, we can offer more cohesive dishes, plus it’s easier for the floor to explain things. People were impressed they could come in and weren’t just given a dry leaf salad or mushroom risotto.”
Like his peers, Gorringe understands that servicing the growing vegan market is good for business. But the bottom line aside, cooking with plants lets him give guests a high-definition taste of New South Wales.
“Vegetables are super seasonal and give you an amazing sense of time and place,” says Gorringe. “Getting things like persimmons, amazing mushrooms and tomatoes that are only at their peak for two months is so much more exciting than a cut of beef you can get all year round.”
Restaurants inside hotels also feature in the hotel food discussion, with names such as David Chang, Heston Blumenthal and Neil Perry among those to have lent their star power to dining precincts. Today, a new generation of cooks are joining forces with hotel operators and opening some fresh-faced concepts.
One of these is Crown Sydney’s Woodcut, a sprawling 350-seater from Sunny and Ross Lusted (late of Bridge Room, with the latter a former Rockpool head chef). The menu is organised by cooking style, with guests choosing from raw, steamed, wood-roasted and charcoal-grilled.
Despite the restaurant’s (very fancy, very polished) steakhouse-y connotations, vegetables are a focus with pressed bean curd skewers and chargrilled lipstick peppers among the plant-based options. The result is a freewheeling prospect that makes a strong argument for big being beautiful, as well as challenging Australians to rethink their traditional aversion to large-scale (hotel) restaurants.
“In our business, a lot of people say ‘stick to your stream and don’t try to be everything to everyone’,” says Ross Lusted. “I disagree with that. In this current climate, you need to be everything to everyone. You need to have families with strollers coming in for a Sunday lunch and you also need the suits, whether they come in on a Friday afternoon or on a Tuesday when they’re trying to get a big deal over the line.”
It barely warrants mentioning, but it’s a challenging time for the hospitality and travel industries, especially while Australia remains closed to international travel. It stands to reason, then, that hotel restaurants, especially, are doing it extra tough. Perhaps the future of hotel dining won’t be a food trend, but a change of focus? Rather than pitching themselves to travellers, what if hotel restaurants thought more about how they could service the local community? What if exploring the potential of plant-based eating got more hotels and their restaurants to think greener and cleaner?
“Hotels rely on their restaurants and room service to make money, so to take a gamble with that revenue is a huge thing,” says Martinez. “I really take my hat off to them for that. More people in power that can effect change need to be doing things like this.” ●