If there’s one word to describe Australia’s big city dining scene – Sydney especially – it would be ‘fickle’. Trends, chefs and restaurants come and go faster than prime ministers.

Which makes it particularly impressive when a restaurant not only proves a true stayer, but does so on the back of an ever-changing clientele, a commitment to quality and continual innovation.

Those qualities could describe Bodhi Restaurant Bar in Sydney, which, in one form or another, has chalked up 30 years of vegan cooking. The latest iteration, tucked hidden-oasis-like in the CBD’s Cook and Phillip Park, began life in 2000 under owner Heaven Leigh. But the Bodhi story began in 1988 when Heaven’s mum, Lee-Leng Whong, inspired by a meeting with a Taoist monk, opened Sydney’s first vegan yum cha restaurant in a tiny space in Chinatown.

Success followed, and eventually led to Heaven’s first standalone restaurant, Bodhidharma, next to the city’s Capitol Theatre, where diners – predominantly vegan – enjoyed modern Asian and Australian vegan dishes.

With this experience behind her, Heaven was inspired to up sticks to Cook and Phillip Park in the shadow of St Mary’s Cathedral and relaunch as Bodhi, going back to the roots of her mother’s original concept but tweaked for a younger generation.

What that means today at the sleek indoor-outdoor space under the shade of massive Moreton Bay figs is yum cha at lunch – multiple varieties of dumplings, steamed dishes, and various oven-baked, fried and sautéed offerings – every single one of them vegan. Then, by night, a sophisticated pan-Asian vegan ‘tapas’ and shared-mains menu. Day or night, there’s a vegan-and-organic-friendly list of wines, beers, cocktails and mocktails, plus teas and coffees.

But while the award-winning menu may be 100 per cent vegan, the clientele today are far from it. “It’s about 50/50 now,” says Heaven. “During the day we get a lot of office workers, families and creative types. Then at night the crowd is enormously mixed.”  

Beyond being totally vegan, “we use as much organic produce as possible, working within seasonal availability,” Heaven adds. “And we follow a Buddhist cooking philosophy where dishes are free from the five pungent vegetables – onions, garlic, green onions, chives and leeks.” She explains that these ingredients can cause inflammation in people following a vegan diet, and affect the digestive system. Bodhi also leans towards soy products over gluten and has a philosophy of doing as much as it can to accommodate various allergic and dietary issues.

Heaven puts much of the success of Bodhi down to not staying still. “We’ve had to keep stepping up the creativity as the competition increases, and evolve as a business – we work very closely with suppliers on product development.”

That creativity comes with an international edge; in the past year Heaven has made research trips to Barcelona, Indonesia and London to learn from other vegan restaurants.

The result is a vegan restaurant as far from the out-of-date stereotypes as it’s possible to imagine.

Bodhi Restaurant and Bar
2/4 College Street, Sydney
https://www.bodhirestaurant.com.au/