Iconic vegie cafe Badde Manors to be reborn as Goode Manors with meat on the menu

When Glebe cafe Badde Manors opened in 1982, Malcolm Fraser was prime minister and the luckless Swans had just relocated from South Melbourne to Sydney. Now the inner-west cafe institution is set for its biggest shake-up in 44 years, reopening with a name tweak and meat on the menu.

The new Goode Manors name isn’t quite as irreverent as the cafe’s original moniker. Truth be told, Badde Manors – with its Hungarian cakes and spin-off a cappella gospel choir – wasn’t entirely kick-arse bad itself. But an all-vegetarian menu in carnivorous 1980s Sydney was pretty rad for its day.

Brothers Nectar and Andrew Malanos want to breathe new life into the famed Sydney cafe site while honouring its past. Goode Manors hasn’t put a wrecking ball through the interior – the site’s new operators have retained many of the original fittings Badde Manors’ co-founder, the late Robert Sebes, built himself.

“There’ll still be plenty of vegetarian [options],” Nectar Malanos said. “We want to broaden the market and cater to everyone, we don’t want to limit ourselves.” Spinach pie and vegetable lasagne will be listed on the menu, alongside stuffed capsicum. “But we’ll also do lamb shanks every now and then,” Malanos said. And there’ll be pies, both meat and vegetarian.

The Malanos brothers know the responsibility of taking on a Sydney hospitality institution. They ran Darlinghurst’s landmark Bar Coluzzi for five years before an eight-year stint at Pier 8 Cafe at Birkenhead Point, which they sold last year.

Andrew Malanos said retaining and reappointing many of the original Badde Manors fittings proved a tougher job than opting for an entirely new fitout. “We’ve restored the booths, kept the fireplaces and the old tiles,” he said. Where they’ve sourced tables and chairs, the brothers have carefully chosen furnishing with “the same look and feel” as the existing interior.

When Sebes first built the booths in the early 1980s, the chemical engineer turned cafe owner was a pioneering 1980s recycler. He trawled closed Sydney cafes for fixtures and fittings. “The cafe originally looked like my living room when it opened,” he told the Herald in 2002, marking the cafe’s then 20-year anniversary. “It was very much an extension of me and still is. It was not a money-making enterprise.”

Badde Manors was more than just a quirky interior and left-field menu. Sebes and wife Judy Backhouse built a business that encouraged and accepted diversity, both from staff and customers.

Sebes tinkered with antique coffee machines and taught himself how to make gelato. A music lover, he ensured an eclectic playlist always hummed at Badde Manors. Tony Backhouse, a musician who worked at the cafe and would become Judy’s second husband, held the auditions in the building for an a cappella gospel choir.

Badde Manors was sold in 2004, but the strength of the brand helped it survive under new ownership in Sydney’s cut-throat and radically evolving cafe scene, right up to the sale of the building last year. Its new operators have already changed the cafe’s glass signage to Goode Manors, and the fading yellow facade and Badde Manors engraved awning is next.

“We hope to open [in] late March,” Andrew Malanos said.