Feast or Famine | New restaurant openings in Hong Kong are a sign of recovery and hope after pandemic and lockdown
- The Covid-19 pandemic has decimated the restaurant trade around the world, but it’s not all doom and gloom
- A number of restaurants have opened in Hong Kong in the past month, offering hope to harder hit places
If the opening of new restaurants is a sign of optimism about the future and an improved economy, then Hong Kong is slowly coming out of the doldrums that marked the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic (we’re all hoping there aren’t more waves in the future).
In the past month we’ve seen several openings, including Chaat at the Rosewood; Crown Super Deluxe, the teppanyaki restaurant operated by the Black Sheep Group; Yakinikumafia from Japan; and Basehall, the upmarket food court in Jardine House.
But those places didn’t spring into being overnight. There are millions of details, large and small, that go into the opening of a new restaurant – deciding on the concept, finding investors, renting (or buying) the space, designing it, buying equipment, fitting out the kitchen and dining area, composing the menu, testing and tweaking the recipes, hiring staff, ordering supplies, and getting the proper licences. The processes began months ago.
Because of the coronavirus, some openings were delayed – because what’s the point of starting a new restaurant when few people were going out?
Of course “few people going out” is far better than “nobody going out at all”, which is the situation in parts of the world that are still under lockdown.