Takeout breakfast, lunch at a convenient dim sum palace and dinner at a favourite hotpot joint: eating out is so convenient and routine that some families regularly have all three meals outside the home. It's a wonder their kitchens are used for anything more than making tea or the odd bowl of instant noodles.
However, the balance is shifting towards greater interest in home cooking with heightened health consciousness, especially among the middle class. Now a couple of Web-based ventures are tapping into their concerns by delivering washed and chopped ingredient packs for ready-to-cook dishes.
They have made converts of novices such as Amanda Cheung Man-yee. An executive in a health products company, Cheung never used to cook at home; her routine after work each day was to select a restaurant for dinner with her husband.
'I know eating out isn't that healthy but who wants to cook after an exhausting day,' she says.
But the Cook Easy service has enticed Cheung to take regular turns at the stove since she came across the website last December. She was hooked, she says, precisely because the venture provides such a simple, trouble-free package.
Placing her orders with a few clicks on the computer, Cheung has a couple of ready-to-cook packs delivered to her home: one containing strips of locally raised, hormone-free chicken, with washed and cut organic vegetables for a stir-fry and another containing ingredients for a carrot and pork soup. All come with easy-to-follow instructions.
'It's hard to go wrong with this,' Cheung says. 'They've done the tedious work for us. The cooking part is actually pretty fun.'