“When I opened my first restaurant, people were scared. You’d say ‘vegan’ and people would run away! In the last few years people are trying it more and many come to us with allergies, especially dairy allergies,” Barrat says.

Her mission is to draw a “conscious dining crowd, vegan or otherwise – foodies all, seeking a destination dining experience that is fun, fresh, feel-good and cruelty-free”.

She explains that raw vegan is “food consumed at a fully raw state, soaked, sprouted, dehydrated at low temperatures, or gently warmed up, which means it is packed with its original nutrients density”.

Given the limitations this would seem to risk imposing on a menu, diners will be pleasantly surprised by dishes that are playful takes on classics or clever creations in their own right. Take faux gras, which blends porcini mushrooms, rosemary and cashew nuts in pâté form. While it doesn’t try to replicate foie gras, it shows how any dish can inspire new plant-based plates.

An excellent watermelon and tomato tartare bought rays of summer on a cold winter’s day, while a broccoli and kale soup was well balanced. The flavours of ratatouille with almond ricotta over quinoa took us to the Mediterranean, but best of all was Barrat’s take on scallops, for which she marinates king oyster mushrooms in soy before roasting them in the oven, making for a remarkably similar bite and mouthfeel to the real thing.

Cheeses and desserts ended the meal, with the whimsically named vegan cheese “shamembert” and a “Tinamisu” with coffee, chocolate and vanilla.

“We wanted to offer alternatives to meat and empower our guests to have options without having to sacrifice the Mott 32 experience,” Wood says. “Our goal was not to simply enlarge the vegetable menu, but to offer the Mott 32 classics exclusively using plant-based ingredients.”

Its approach goes way beyond ingredients, however. “As a company we operate on a triple-bottom-line mentality. We spent the last five years filming a documentary on the climate emergency called The Last Glaciers. We have learned the facts for ourselves and on that journey we realised that what we eat plays a significant role in climate change.”

For its plant-based “eel”, for example, chef Lee used shiitake mushroom because it had the closest texture. The result is remarkable, not just in texture but also in taste.

Ovolo Hotels made headlines recently when it announced that its boutique hotel restaurants in Hong Kong and Australia would be vegetarian for one year (although not the ones under the Ovolo Collective brand).

Tronco, who is also a vegetarian, says the restaurant’s new menu will “push the boundaries of cooking with vegetables – not basic leafy salads or boring veggie wraps!”

The dishes span the globe, from Southeast Asia to India to Europe. There’s a signature main course of green risotto, with spears of asparagus, sautéed seasonal wild mushrooms and chunks of pumpkin.

The stand-out dish was the roasted purple cauliflower brushed with a Nepali spice mix, which was crisp outside and soft within. Spanish piquillo peppers were diced and slow-cooked in extra virgin olive oil, while the final element was a silky and smooth purée of roasted aubergine.

Where possible, the restaurant uses locally sourced ingredients, and none of Ovolo’s suppliers use plastics or styrofoam boxes, in keeping with its sustainable mission. As to whether the restaurant will revert to serving meat again once “year of the veg” is over, Tronco hopes that the vegetarian-only concept will extend longer.

The final word goes to chef Peggy Chan, one of the city’s pioneers when it comes to plant-based, sustainable eating. Her brand, Grassroots Initiatives, works with restaurant and catering groups like Sodexo and Maxim’s in creating new low-waste, cost-effective concepts, with sustainable practice embedded in the business.

She has also found time to create a burger for Leaves & Liberty, a month-long vegetarian pop-up at Beef & Liberty in Lan Kwai Fong.

On my visit, every socially distanced seat was taken and people were being turned away, another proof point of the draw of plant-based dining, even at a place best known for its beef. Chan’s Afertshroom burger is a decadent creation inspired by Korea featuring a lion’s mane mushroom with its impressively meaty texture, a vegan mayonnaise with yangnyeom sweet-spicy sauce, and kimchi slaw, all served on a vegan sweet potato bun.

It makes for great eating and is exactly what you want in a burger.

It’s a reminder of the importance of food. Chan says. “There’s no better way to wake people up than the pandemic. Our broken food system shows that food is the single most important and impactful way to address climate change. I can’t tell people what diet they should consume, there’s no one single way to solve this problem, so you need to look at it holistically.”

As these four Hong Kong menus show, delicious, nutritious and plant-based cuisine is clearly a key part of that process.

Ma … and The Seeds of Life, 1/F, H18 Conet, 23 Graham Street, Central, tel: 6469 4533

Mott 32, Basement, Standard Chartered Bank Building, 4-4A Des Voeux Road Central, Central, tel: 2885 8688

Kömune, Ovolo Southside, 64 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang, tel: 3460 8157

Leaves & Liberty at Beef & Liberty, 3/F California Tower, 30-32 D’Aguilar Street, Lan Kwai Fong, tel: 2450 5778