Feast or Famine | From praising to fundraising, dining awards group pivots to help restaurants survive coronavirus shutdowns
- Company that puts out annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants list to publish e-cookbook by top chefs, and auction meals, to raise funds for independent restaurants
- Restaurant industry has been hit hard by lockdowns and faces social distancing restrictions that will limit sales when restaurants reopen
As a regional chairwoman for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, I was recently asked by the London-based organiser of the lists for input about the state of the restaurant industry in my “part of the world”.
For the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, the organisers divided “the world” into 26 regions (six are in Asia), and the academy chairs for each region, to give my formal title, choose voters to pick their “best” restaurants, which are then tallied and released in what is usually an annual list.
The coronavirus pandemic put a spanner into that, of course.
While the results for Asia’s 50 Best were announced via live stream in March, instead of at a glamorous event that had been planned in Saga, Japan, organisers decided to forgo announcing the World’s 50 Best list this year in favour of 50 Best for Recovery, a worldwide effort to support restaurants through the crisis and in the aftermath.
I was pleased to tell them that my part of the world – the region of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan – was actually quite fine compared to almost everywhere else. Taiwan stopped the coronavirus early on by shutting its borders, as did Macau.