In my opinion a Vegetarian Guide to Sydney could start and finish here, at Bodhi, so I will put it first, just in case you have no time to read the rest!
I have a Vegetarian friend who comes to Sydney a lot and tells me that she always come here for lunch, as they have great Vegan Yum Cha. We came for dinner with friends, definitely a more formal situation than Yam Cha, but as we don't have "elegant" Vegan restaurants in NZ, this was a real treat! The kids kept looking at the menu: "Mamma, are you sure that we can order anything from here? Is it really all vegetarian?" they couldn't believe their eyes! It was too dark to take photos, and we were so busy eating and talking with our old friends, but I can assure you that everything was good, and the service impeccable. I would love to come back again, possibly in summer, so that we can sit outside!
I don't know what our other three friends ordered, I was too busy trying to remember the name of all our dishes, and fortunately I got them from Bodhi's website (except for my main, the day's special, not on the menu). The kids enjoyed rolling pancakes with vegetarian Pecking duck.
entrée
We all shared:
edemame beans with rock salt
4.5
assorted – bbq, chickpea, chinese cabbage steamed buns
8.0
tempura australian field mushrooms, bbq sauce
8.5
sweet yam tempura spring rolls served with sweet chilli sauce
9.5
salt,pepper, chilli, corriander, tempura vegetarian ‘prawns’
12.5
main
Peter had:
dry roasted salted peanut spices topped on fried eggplant with a celery and asian mushroom stuffing
17.5
The Kids shared:
bodhi vegetarian peking ‘duck’, bbq sauce, cucumber and pancakes
21.0
and I had:
The day's special: Roasted Tofu and vegetables with Chef's special sauce
(Sorry, I don't have the price, but it is the bottom right photo, next to the veggie Peking duck, the tofu was soft and delicious!)
Check the rest of the menu here
As you can guess we didn't need dessert, but rolled back to the hotel on our bellies!
Thank you Steve for inviting us for dinner!
And now, if you like to read on, here are few more Veggie suggestions:
 |
Sydney in winter, the view from our hotel's room.
We stayed here, but didn't use the pool: too cold! |
On our first day in Sydney we strolled the city centre, and in the charming Queen Victoria Building we smelled pizza! It was lunch time and Vanto was very busy, but we found a table for 4. I didn't really plan this, but looking around at the other alternatives nothing quite took my fancy like this little Italian place. The kids can eat pizza any time, and in an Italian restaurant you can always find something vegetarian, so the decision was made, and a good decision too!
To be honest at first I didn't expect much, I thought that it was probably just another place for tourists, but the two pizzas (a vegetarian and a margherita) were lovely, and we tried some Italian pastries too. Coffee was good too, and so was the staff, all Italian men, some just arrived on their working holiday visas, ready to take on Australia! Good luck to them!
You can find the menu for meals and pizzas in Vanto's website, they also do gluten free pizza, and take aways. If I'll go back to Sydney (possible!!) I would happily return here: well priced, unpretentious and with nice food.
 |
| I always like the older buildings better... |
We found Bon Bon walking around looking for breakfast. Now, some of you may laugh, but it is quite logical for an Italian to look for breakfast where they sell chocolate, and this time I was ok even for the Anglo-Saxon breakfast eating boys!! In fact the cafe below the chocolate boutique was perfectly quiet and we were served in no time a full breakfast: poached eggs, sour bread toasts, fruit and yogurt, pastries, nice coffee and, of course, lovely hot chocolate (a 38% Ivory Coast milk chic, and a 70% Cocoa Ecuador dark chocolate). I bought a box to take away to the Central Australian desert, where I imagined we could have benefitted from hot chocolate in the evenings, and I was right again! Truly good chocolate!
I didn't take many photos of the breakfast as the cafe downstair had poor lighting, but I wonder if they saw me trying with my iPhone, and thought that I was one of those food bloggers (you know the type?) because when we went to pay they gifted us with 4 little boxes to be filled with a chocolate of our choice each from the
Bon Bon chocolate shop upstairs. Yum!! We all chose our chocolates, and I had one of the read hearts (a kind of gianduia!). For address, a menu, and prices check the Bon Bon
website.
This is my friend Luca, he used to live in my village in Italy, in front of my house (yes, right in front), I hadn't seen him for over two decades (lets not get into how old we are now, but just say that we left the village very young!) and then I found out that he was in Sydney! So we finally met in Oxford St, at
Lumière. Yes, breakfast again, but good to know that you can have it all day long, especially when they have a lot of veggie options, and the soy cappuccino is good!
I don't eat much for breakfast, but I do like a good coffee, and good bread. Thank you for breakfast Luca!
Not far from Lumière, and still in the lively Oxford Street, you can also find one of the city's many
Iku Wholefood stores, Vegan and macrobiotic. I remember eating here years and years ago (maybe it was the first one?) and now look
here for how many there are in the city!
 |
| The view from the Sydney Tower Eye: go up late in the afternoon and wait for the evening! |
Children are the best excuse to spend the entire day at the zoo! I have seen many zoos in my life, and Sydney's Taronga Zoo may not be the best one, but it definitely has the best views ever! You reach it by ferry, then with a cable car, and at the top you can take in many beautiful prospectives of Sydney Harbor in the new scenic boardwalk between the African Safari and Big Cats Trail. And then, of course there are all Australian animals, so different and wonderful.
 |
| Please note, the dead kangaroo near the Tasmanian Devil is actually a statue... |
But a bonus point to Taronga Zoo goes to fact that we could actually eat there!! Zoo food usually is quite limited and expensive, and local families with children tend to carry their picnic (no matter which country you are in), something that we didn't plan or wanted to do. We avoided the big Taronga Food Market which smelled of chips and meat pies, and opted for the quiet albeit more expensive looking Harbor View Cafe. And look at this: there was actually a choice for vegetarians! Nice one Taronga Zoo!
This is another place that we visited again and again and again: the food court at David Jones! A bit expensive, but everything looked really tempting (and inspiring).
One evening we ate at the sushi bar in
David Jones, as they had a few vegetarian sushi rolls beautifully cut and presented, and drunk fresh coconut milk and fruit smoothies from the juice bar in the same food court. But there are many more things that you can buy there!
In fact I was really taken in by the delicatessen section, and the department store was so close to the hotel that a couple of meals were just 'improvised' when we were too tired to go out again for dinner. All we needed to do was to pop next door, buy some nice crusty bread, antipasti, spreads, and other little treats and take them back to our hotel room.
Well, we only had 4 nights in Sydney, which equal 4 dinners, 4 lunches and 4 breakfasts, plus snacks, and I reported only what I thought was worth reporting. But I will return for sure, so if you have any more places to add to this list please leave me a comment :-).
Bye Sydney!
Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©
The Wordsmith Tour aims to inspire kids in intermediate and high schools to write, and to become writers! Every year three writers are chosen to tour the schools and talk to the students, and this year I am thrilled to be one of them, alongside Phillip W. Simpson and Johnny Angel. 
