Ovolo Hotels in Australia and Hong Kong go vegetarian

Ovolo Hotels announced today, on World Vegetarian Day, that all of its restaurants and bars across Australia and Hong Kong will go completely vegetarian for the next 365 days. 

As part of the initiative dubbed “The Year of the Veg,” Ovolo’s Australian venues that will go vegetarian for a full year include: Monster Kitchen & Bar at Ovolo 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 Ovolo The Valley in Brisbane, helmed by Israeli-born chef Roy Ner (formerly of Nour and Lilah in Sydney); and Mister Percy at Ovolo 1888 Darling Harbour in Sydney, which will be transformed into a vegetarian Italian wine bar. At Ovolo 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.

At Ovolo in Hong Kong, the movement towards vegetarianism began at Veda at Ovolo Central, Hong Kong’s very first vegetarian hotel restaurant. Now, Komune, the lively all-day dining destination at Ovolo 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.  

Ovolo’s Founder and CEO Girish Jhunjhnuwala says, “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.”

Committed to continuously finding ways to further reduce its environmental footprint, Ovolo’s move towards completely vegetarian restaurants and “ethical eating” follows several other eco-friendly initiatives already implemented by the hotel collection in the past year. These include elimination of all single-use plastic bathroom amenities and making use of 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.