The things occupying our minds this month

As the third wave of Covid-19 hit the city, the Hong Kong government required restaurants to limit their dine-in hours to between 5am and 6pm, meaning only takeaway meals can be purchased at dinnertime. Unless you are an intermittent faster who restricts your eating to just a small window of daylight hours, this news is hardly exciting. Somehow, the meal between breakfast and lunch became fashionable, but eating the final meal of the day in that awkward late-afternoon, early-evening space became more associated with grandparents and schoolchildren who need to be in bed by 7pm. Unlike the endlessly Instagrammed avocado on toast, açai bowls and pancake stacks of brunchtime, smartphone-toting influencers haven’t yet capitalised on the culinary hinterland between 3pm and 6pm. So what do we call it? The internet says ‘lunner’ (ugh); Tatler dining editor Wilson Fok suggests ‘lunchner’, which sounds like an app to share pictures of people’s bland salads al desko. We turned to the chefs. Fittingly, chef Max Levy of Okra Hong Kong prefers the Japanese phrase oyatsu, which literally translates to ‘in between meals’; perfect for the restaurant’s izakaya style of dining, which involves small plates. Mono’s Ricardo Chaneton likes the phrase goûter to describe the French tradition of eating lighter bites around 5pm before a late dinner. Meanwhile, chefs Luca de Berardinis and Alessandro Angelini of Lucale like merienda, a term coined by sophisticated Europeans to refer to an afternoon meal. Who’s up for some salumi?