Feast or Famine | Fine-dining takeaway meals take off amid Covid-19 dine-in ban – and yes, they cost a bit more

To pay the bills amid Covid-19 dine-in ban, fine-dining restaurants are offering meals for takeaway and delivery, carefully packaged with serving instructions

Dearer than regular takeaways, they have found a ready market – Michelin-star Tate Dining’s dinner for two, delivered for HK$1,960, has a one-week waiting list

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High-end restaurants in Hong Kong, which cannot serve dine-in dinners beause of Covid-19 restrictions, are selling takeaways and meals for delivery for the first time. Wooden packaging is used for Date by Tate’s Gastronomy Box. Photo: Tate

Published: 8:45am, 14 Aug 2020Updated: 8:45am, 14 Aug 2020

With Hong Kong still in the midst of its third wave of the coronavirus, businesses of all types continue to pay the price for its closure to tourists, residents’ reluctance to spend as freely as before, and government restrictions of various kinds.

Restaurants are, among other things, not allowed to serve groups larger than two, must have 1.5 metres of space or a partition between tables, can operate at no more than 50 per cent capacity, and are not allowed to serve food on the premises between 6pm and 4.59am.

Because of the loss of income arising from these restrictions, restaurants that didn’t previously consider takeaways or food deliveries are now offering them.

One of the complaints that I’ve been hearing is, “Wow, the takeaway from Restaurant X is not cheap!” But in most cases, why should it be? Ingredients cost the same as they did pre-coronavirus, salaries for restaurant workers haven’t gone down, and restaurateurs still have to pay outrageous rents for their premises, because it’s certain that landlords aren’t reducing rents for something as paltry as a pandemic – it’s not in their nature to be so kind. (There might be some nice landlords out there, and if you know of any, I’d love to hear about them.)

Chef Simon Rogan has created the Simon Rogan at Home package.

A three-course takeaway meal from Home – pea soup with pike perch and pea salad; local three yellow chicken with corn and maitake mushrooms; and caramelised white chocolate pudding with strawberries and toasted hay custard. Photo: Home

Just as you wouldn’t eat out at your favourite expensive restaurant every day, so it is that you aren’t going to order your takeaway dinner from them every night. The work that chefs put into these meals, the thought that goes into what dishes work best for takeaway, the instructions they come up with to explain the optimal way to reheat the food once you get it home, and the packaging they use to best present the food – that all takes time and effort.