My county just opened up outdoor dining today but I doubt I’ll partake for dinners because the wind picks up and I get cold! Maybe I could be persuaded for lunch. Since the shutdown in mid-March, we’ve only had carry out once — on my birthday when I wanted an avocado burger, sweet potato fries, and a real milkshake from a family owned burger place. This is a once or twice a year indulgence because I never eat that type of food. I like the ambiance of indoor dining but can’t imagine doing so other than at home in the foreseeable future.

Eating out became a landmine in HK last year even before the virus, due to the protests. People would update lists of which restaurants were known to be 'yellow' (supporting the protestors) or 'blue' (supporting the police) & would berate you for eating at the 'opposite' side to their beliefs. It was easier for me to just stay at home since my partner would agonise over it & berate me for even getting my sanitary supplies from the 'wrong' place (even though we didn't have a grocery store near us that supported the other side), lol.

Even now, although restaurants have already opened back up with social distancing measures, he's been very apprehensive & paranoid about me going out to eat at all. But given how tiny HK kitchens are (no oven!), he's 'allowed' us to get takeaway in the meanwhile, lol. I should stress that Hong Kong's number of cases are much lower than elsewhere though (sometimes single digits) & most of the cases we're still getting are from people returning from overseas - we went into virus lockdown at the end of January, so our current measures are somewhat 'in the future' compared to the west's situation.

I think the turning point was when I had to go to campus for an all-day meeting & they ordered delivery for all of us to eat in the meeting room. It honestly felt a little pushy to mandate in-person attendance rather than over Zoom, since I had already mentioned that I live with vulnerable people & don't want to put them at risk (in-laws), but I'm somewhat glad because I'm sure an entire day of Zoom work meetings would have been awful lol.

Anyway, after getting annoyed about that, I think my partner loosened up a bit. He recently went to go get brunch with a friend (hypocritical I know lol, but I figured it was better to let him do that & encourage him to meet up with someone - it's been over 8 months now since we've both been WFH so, whilst he may not say it, I think it was good for him to go socialise with someone).

Long story short, we both recently had to go to campus at the start of this week & it was a long work day so we ended up eating dinner together (we both work at the same university!) I think now that we've tried it a couple of times & the places we went to haven't been reported for any cases, he's coming round to the idea of eating out again (one woman who contracted it worked at a logistics warehouse for packaging UK goods, so for a while he also banned me from buying anything from UK supermarkets, like Mark's & Spencer's - bye bye Western foods for dinner lol!)

Sorry that was so long, but just wanted to share what a political & health-related journey it's been lol. On a positive note, we should hopefully be going out to eat 'properly' (like getting dressed up on a weekend, not just the quick student spot on campus) this or next weekend, after going for a group bike run (the colleague who organises it is American - I think she calls it a 'bike party' lol? Apparently it's a thing in the states?)

Anyway, as an introvert, I never thought I would be so excited to eat actual food & wear actual clothes for an actual outing, haha! So just wanted to share some light from the other end of the tunnel - here's hoping your patience will pay off & you can all join me in eating out eventually too

I can't remember when we ordered some take away food, maybe few years ago. I personally don't like eating take away, the food tends to be greasy and most of the times it lacks flavour. I cook from scratch almost every day excluding Saturday and Friday. Friday is a curry prepared the day before and on Saturday we often have a pizza with some salad, I prepare the dough once a month and the unused dough is frozen. If I stick to the weekly plan, it's simple and easy to prepare the food!

We used to go to restaurants once a month, most of the times the restaurant offered a type of cuisine neither of us know how to cook it (japanese, persian, vietnamese,...) , I like this as it opens to new flavours and ideas .

Jim's Pizza sounds like a winner with that fantastic Caesar salad. U92 Spice House's Indian dinner for four also seems like quite the spicy adventure, and those leftovers didn't stand a chance, huh?

Three years ago.