How Hong Kong’s Michelin-star and high-end restaurants took on the takeaway challenge amid coronavirus pandemic
- These aren’t your average Deliveroo orders – think Peking duck with steamed pancakes, or a US$230 Hokkaido horsehair crab hotpot
- Belon, Duddell’s and Nikushou all said packaging was one of the biggest issues they faced in creating their takeaway menus
When Anthony Ng Tak-lun first heard reports in late December of a cluster of viral illness in Wuhan, China, he knew he had to modify his restaurant operations.
Having gone through the Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic 17 years ago, although not as a restaurateur, he understood the priority had to be offering a takeaway menu to his customers at Nikushou, a Japanese grilled meat restaurant in Hong Kong, and Seiku, which specialises in kaiseki – a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner – in Shenzhen.
“We also talked with our staff about opening for lunch, which we hadn’t done for the past three years,” Ng says.
He worked with his Japanese chef in Shenzhen to develop a lunch menu at Nikushou, which doubles as the takeaway menu, and started offering it to customers at the end of January.
It’s not the sort of thing the average office worker will order from Deliveroo. Dishes include prawn cutlet sandwiches (HK$108; US$14), wagyu tendon curry rice (HK$148) and koko don (HK$148) – a rice bowl with mentaiko chicken and egg.
There are also much pricier items, such as Nikushou’s signature wagyu cutlet sandwiches (HK$418), chirashi don (HK$488) – various slices of sashimi on rice – and saba bonzushi, thick pieces of mackerel pressed onto vinegared rice that needs to be ordered a day in advance and costs HK$588.