Takeaway takeover – steering a course through an unfolding pandemic

Local fine dining restaurant, Pilot, is tucked away in the back corner of the Ainslie shops in a quiet suburb of North Canberra. Over the last five months, Pilot has steered a course through the unfolding pandemic, as the changing relationship between diners and the restaurant has mapped the meandering trail of the COVID-19 pandemic through lockdown and easing. We’d been to Pilot to sample their long Sunday lunch in late February before the world fell apart. Then the pandemic struck and the lockdown began. Stuck at home our minds turned to the fine dining of the new era – takeaway. Then in July, as the lockdown finally eased – at least for a while – we found our way back to Pilot.

Looking back after many months our earlier long Sunday lunch at Pilot restaurant in late February now seems to be part of another world. I suppose it’s much like many other local places across Australia – once regular haunts of diners seeking a good night, or day, out, suddenly stranded by circumstance. It was a time when a relatively obscure regional city in China – Wuhan – was bettter known as a UNESCO Creative City of Design, than the source of a global pandemic.

‘Looking back after many months our earlier long Sunday lunch at Pilot restaurant in late February now seems to be part of another world. I suppose it’s much like many other local places across Australia – once regular haunts of diners seeking a good night, or day, out, suddenly stranded by circumstance.’

Fish curry in aromatic broth.

How quickly this all happened was brought home when I realised that I had two unfinished articles for this blog – one about the long Sunday lunch just before we went away on a two and a half week regional road tour to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island in March and one about the takeover of the dining world by takeaways, as restaurants scrambled to convert their operations in order to survive.