Lin Songtao

254238712@qq.com

AFTER a week of shutdown, Panagiotis Kalamidas’ steakhouse in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, reopened last Monday. It has begun to offer dine-in services at half capacity as regulations required, with deliveries available.

The Greek expat said when the city entered into lockdown, the restaurant began to do delivery by Meituan. “We did, starting from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. We got a bit of business because we have a lot of loyal guests that still wanted to enjoy some good steaks and wine. But nothing compared to a running restaurant.”

The chef joked that he was kind of working at home through his phone. “I had to be on the phone all the time and tried to explain affairs to my staffers from the phone: how to cook this, how to make that and so on.”

“We were up and running straight away on lunchtime March 21. I felt excited to be back in the restaurant and cook. You can be with everybody together rather than staying at home and drinking wine all night,” he said.

His steakhouse’s customer flow rate has been slowly increasing over the past week as the local COVID cases in Shenzhen are recently decreasing. “If the restaurant is 50% full, I’ll be happy,” Kalamidas said, hoping more people will come out to have meals.

Regarding the supportive policies unveiled by the city’s government Friday, he said yesterday that although it is not very clear how much help the restaurant can get, it’s good that the authority has come up with policies to cover some costs for the catering sector.

Vegetables in the steakhouse are sourced from Guangzhou and Shenzhen. As Shenzhen is coming back to normal, Kalamidas said it’s easier to buy in dry goods. “Today, we have 90% of the dishes on the menu. It came through, but it wasn’t an easy way for sure.”

“We were going to launch a spring menu in the beginning of March, but the lockdown stopped that, so hopefully we can do that in April,” he said.