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| HONG KONG — The lines begin forming before lunchtime and wind on well into the night, with customers outside craning their necks for views of the day’s selection through the window. | 香港——午餐时间开始前，队伍就排起来了，一直持续到深夜。餐厅外面的顾客伸着脖子透过窗户查看当天的菜品。 |
| It is not a newly anointed Michelin bistro or the latest photogenic, Instagram-friendly confection that has captivated Hong Kong, a famously epicurean city. | 这不是刚刚得到米其林垂青的餐馆，也不是最新一道俘获美食城市香港的网红甜点。 |
| It is a humble takeout box of white rice and two precooked main dishes of the diner’s choosing. The price: around $4. | 这是一个简朴的外卖盒，白米饭配用餐者自选的两道预先做好的菜。价格约4美元左右。 |
| Bare-bones restaurants offering these simple meals have become an unexpected food fad in Hong Kong, prompting an explosion of vendors, the fascination of food bloggers and even a 77,000-member Facebook fan group. | 提供这些朴素餐点的简易餐厅出乎意料地成为了香港的美食时尚，出现大量类似餐厅，美食博主慕名而来，甚至有7.7万名成员加入了一个相关的Facebook粉丝群。 |
| The food itself hardly seems worth the attention. The offerings are standards of Cantonese cuisine, with options like stir-fried tomato and eggs, sweet and sour pork, or braised beef and turnip. They are ordered cafeteria-style, by pointing or shouting one’s order to an expectant worker with a ladle. Even the name given to these establishments is as no-frills as their menus: “two dishes and rice.” | 食物本身似乎平平无奇，都是粤菜的标准菜式，例如番茄炒蛋、咕噜肉或萝卜炖牛腩。下单方式与食堂一样，用手指向或大声告诉拿着菜勺等待客人点菜的工作人员。甚至这些餐厅的称呼也和他们的菜单一样朴实无华：两餸饭。 |
| But that plainness is the point. | 但朴实无华正是重点。 |
| In a city pummeled by two years of political upheaval, economic downturn and seemingly endless pandemic controls — a ban on dining in after 6 p.m. just lifted late last month — two-dishes-and-rice places have become a lifeline. | 香港已经饱受两年政治动荡、经济衰退和似乎没完没了的大流行防控措施——下午6点后禁止堂食的措施上个月底刚刚解除——提供两餸饭的地方已经成为救命稻草。 |
| For struggling restaurant owners, this business model is a rare source of surging demand. For diners, the food is a cheap and convenient staple, the two dishes offering the comforting flavors and variety that define Chinese home cooking. | 对于苦苦挣扎的餐厅老板来说，这种客户需求如此高涨的商业模式很罕见。对于食客来说，这些家常菜品便宜又方便，两道菜可以提供住家饭的家常风味和多样性。 |
| There are now at least 353 businesses selling two dishes and rice across the city, according to a crowdsourced map. No census exists of how many existed before, but Hong Kong food scholars and diners agreed there were far fewer before the pandemic. | 根据大众制作的地图，现在全市至少有353家餐厅在提供两餸饭。以前没有人统计过，但香港美食学者和食客一致认为，在大流行之前，两餸饭餐厅的数量要少得多。 |
| “You can be sure that when you go into this kind of restaurant, you can get something that won’t go wrong,” said Kitty Ho, a nurse eating lunch with her boyfriend, Jack Fung, an I.T. worker, in the blue-collar neighborhood of North Point. | “你可以肯定，当你走进这样的餐厅时，你得到的东西不会出错，”护士姬蒂·何（音）说，她和她的男友、IT工作者杰克·冯（音）正在在北角的蓝领社区一起吃午饭。 |
| Ms. Ho and Mr. Fung, both in their 20s, said they had started eating the lunchboxes multiple times a week in recent months, especially after Ms. Ho, who follows many food-related pages on social media, found the Facebook fan group. | 何女士和冯先生都是20多岁，他们表示，最近几个月他们开始每周吃好几次这样的午餐盒饭，尤其是在何女士发现这个Facebook粉丝群之后。她在社交媒体上关注许多与食物相关的页面。 |
| The spot they had chosen that day, Kai Kee, was a classic of the genre in its unapologetic lack of ambience. Its walls were lime green, matching the plastic chopsticks and upholstered chairs. (While many two-dishes-and-rice shops are takeout only, some offer spartan seating areas.) | 他们那天选择的地点“佳记”是这类餐厅的经典例子，因为它毫无气氛可言。它的墙壁是浅绿色的，搭配着塑料筷子和软垫椅子的颜色。（虽然许多两餸饭只提供外卖，但有些提供简单的堂食环境。） |
| Cardboard boxes, each holding 500 Styrofoam containers, were stacked in the middle of the floor. No music played; the only soundtrack was the shouts of workers hurrying between the kitchen, which exhaled clouds of steam into the dining area, and the front, where the food was served. | 纸板箱堆放在餐厅中间，每个箱子里装有500个聚苯乙烯泡沫塑料容器。没有背景音乐；唯一的配乐是忙碌的餐厅工人的大声传话，他们穿梭在蒸汽缭绕的后厨和盛菜的柜台之间。 |
| The day’s two dozen or so dishes were displayed, buffet-style, in an L-shaped array of stainless steel pans. Two dishes cost 32 Hong Kong dollars, or $4, cash only; each additional dish was $1 extra. All the options — spicy eggplant, pig ears, stir-fried cauliflower — were brightly colored and clearly visible from the street through large windows to entice passers-by. | 当天的二十多道菜肴以自助餐的形式陈列在L形柜台的不锈钢菜盘中。两道菜32港元，即4美元，只收现金；每增加一道菜额外加收1美元。所有的菜品——辣茄子、猪耳朵、炒花椰菜——颜色鲜艳，从街上透过大窗户清晰可见，吸引着路人。 |
| Two dishes and rice is not new to Hong Kong. But it had long been overlooked, or dismissed as the realm of broke students or the working class. In both format and quality, it recalls Panda Express in the United States. In Hong Kong, some jokingly referred to it as “cursory rice,” to reflect their low expectations. | 两餸饭对香港来说并不新鲜。但它长期以来一直被忽视，或被视为穷学生或工人阶级的天地。无论是形式还是质量，都让人想起美国的熊猫快餐。在香港，有人戏称它为“颓饭”，以反映人们对它们的低期望。 |
| “It was seen as food for commoners, people with low incomes,” said Siu Yan Ho, a lecturer who studies the city’s food culture at Hong Kong Baptist University. | “开始的时候，它属于一个比较平民，收入比较低的人去吃，”在香港浸会大学研究城市饮食文化的讲师萧欣浩说。 |
| Then the pandemic hit. Unemployment jumped. Hong Kong’s world-famous restaurant scene was left limping along. The most recent ban on dining in at restaurants in the evening lasted nearly four months, and even though it has been lifted, people still cannot gather in groups larger than four. | 后来，大流行来了。失业率飙升。香港举世闻名的美食风景举步维艰。最近的一次禁止晚间堂食的禁令持续了近四个月，即使已经解除，人们仍然不能进行四人以上的聚餐。 |
| Many Hong Kongers also do not cook, in a city where groceries are expensive and tiny apartments may not have kitchens. | 许多香港人也不做饭，在这个城市，食品杂货价格昂贵，小公寓可能没有厨房。 |
| So the types and numbers of people who can appreciate a cheap, filling meal widened considerably. And Hong Kong’s food entrepreneurs have responded. | 因此，越来越多来自更多群体的人开始懂得欣赏便宜丰盛的一餐。香港的餐饮业者也做出了回应。 |
| Chefs at ailing cha chaan tengs — traditional Hong Kong sit-down eateries — quit to open two-dishes-and-rice shops. A popular local hot dog chain started its own two-dishes-and-rice offshoot. Seafood banquet halls wheeled out a few pans of ready-made dishes at night as takeout options when the dine-in ban kicked in. So did coffee shops better known for their latte artistry. | 厨师们纷纷从境况不佳的茶餐厅（传统的香港堂食餐馆）辞职，经营自己的两餸饭小店。一家受欢迎的本地热狗连锁店开始经营自己的两餸饭分店。堂食禁令生效后，许多海鲜酒家晚上推出几锅现成菜肴，作为外卖选择。一些以拿铁咖啡闻名的咖啡店也是如此。 |
| “We get office ladies, students, older people, cleaning workers,” said Kai Kee’s owner, Wong Chi-wai, adding that he usually sold 1,000 meals a day at each of his six locations. | “我们的顾客群很广的。有OL(Office Lady），有学生，老人家也有，清洁工也有，都愿意来帮衬，”佳记的老板黄志伟说。他补充说，他的六个分店通常每天能卖出1000份饭。 |
| To distinguish themselves among all the competition, some shops offer whole steamed fish or lobster for a few additional dollars. Others throw in free soup. One spot in the Yau Ma Tei neighborhood includes truffle chicken, red rice and quinoa to lure younger customers. | 为了在各种竞争中脱颖而出，一些店提供整条蒸鱼或龙虾，只需多花几十元。还有一些店提供免费汤。油麻地附近有一家店出售松露鸡、红米饭和藜麦，以此吸引年轻顾客。 |
| Still, even the most devoted customers have no illusions this is fine dining. | 不过，即使是最忠实的顾客也没有幻想能吃到高级餐食。 |
| “I don’t have too many requirements,” said Kelvin Tam, another Kai Kee customer, who had chosen curried fish balls and a beef and leek stir fry. “As long as it doesn’t taste too bad and is edible, then it’s OK.” | “没有什么要求啦，”另一位佳记的顾客凯文·谭（音）说，他点了咖喱鱼丸和葱爆牛柳。“只要不是太难吃，可以入口就OK啦。” |
| Despite his lukewarm praise, Mr. Tam, a 60-year-old property company employee dressed in a shirt and tie, said he was a regular, noting that the ingredients were fresher than elsewhere he had tried. | 尽管对这里评价不高，现年60岁、穿衬衫打领带的房地产公司员工凯文·谭说，他是这里的常客。他说，这里的食材比他试过的其他地方都要新鲜。 |
| Tips like these for other diners abound on the Facebook fan group site. Every day, dozens of people post photos of their lunchbox, along with notes: The pork chops at a shop in the Prince Edward neighborhood were cold today, or the staff at this one in Tai Kok Tsui are especially friendly. | 在Facebook的粉丝群组中，其他食客的小贴士比比皆是。每天都有数十人上传自己午餐盒的照片，并附上评论：太子附近一家店的猪排今天是凉的，或者大角咀这家店的员工特别友好。 |
| Some reviewers have the hallmarks of true connoisseurs. “The meatballs were pretty good. The ratio of lean meat to flour to water chestnuts was about 5:4:1, and I didn’t detect any fat,” one member wrote. | 有些评论者很像是真正的行家。“狮子球我觉得很好。瘦肉同面粉同马蹄的比例大概5:4:1，没吃出有肥肉，”一位成员写道。 |
| The Facebook group’s passion underscored the new importance of these meals during the pandemic, said Selina Ching Chan, a professor at Shue Yan University in Hong Kong who has studied the city’s food culture. Diners were expressing their appreciation for something that had become “a public good,” she said. | 研究香港饮食文化的香港树仁大学教授陈蒨说，Facebook群组的热情突显了这些餐食在疫情期间新的重要性。她说，用餐者表达了他们对这种已经成为“公益”的食品的赞赏。 |
| And the conversations on the site were more inclusive than the ones that usually take place around Hong Kong’s glittering food scene, she added. “It’s very different from Michelin stars, gourmet experts, which highlight distinction, outstanding stores. Here we salute different things.” | 她还说，比起华丽的香港美食界，网站上的对话比通常更具包容性。“这与米其林星级和美食专家非常不同，后者强调优雅出众的门店。在网上，我们赞美不同的东西。” |
| Like all food trends, this one is likely to end. It may already be in its sunset days: On the day the 6 p.m. dining-in ban was lifted, Andrew Wong, the Facebook fan group’s founder, posted, “The All-Hong Kong Two Dishes and Rice Thanksgiving Festival has officially ended.” Many members wrote how excited they were to sit down at dim sum parlors with friends again. | 就像所有的美食趋势一样，这个趋势也可能会结束。它可能已经进入了夕阳时分：在下午6点的堂食禁令被解除那天，这个Facebook粉丝群的创始人黄旭熙发帖称，“全香港两餸饭感谢祭正式结束。”许多会员写道，能再次和朋友们一起坐在茶点小馆里，他们非常兴奋。 |
| Still, many said there would always be an appetite for the rice boxes — both among the converted, and those who had long depended on them. | 尽管如此，许多人还是说，对两餸饭的需求总会有的——无论是半路转投的人，还是早已长期依赖它们的人。 |
| That includes Lo Siu-ying, 64. Peering at the day’s selection at Kai Kee, Ms. Lo, dressed in a pair of rubber work boots, said she’d been eating there for years. It was the easiest option for herself and her husband, both of whom left home at 8 a.m. for their job as building cleaners and returned past midnight. | 其中包括64岁的卢小英。穿着橡胶工作靴的罗小英看着佳记餐厅当天的菜单，说她已经在那里吃了很多年了。对她和丈夫来说，这是最简单的选择，他们都是早上8点离开家去做建筑清洁工，回家时已是午夜。 |
| She would be glad, she said, when others became less reliant on it, though. Her work had become extra tiring during the pandemic, because the amount of trash she had to take out had doubled. | 不过，她说，如果其他人不再那么依赖它，她会觉得很高兴。疫情期间，她的工作变得格外繁重，因为她要处理的垃圾翻了一番。 |
| “Everyone is buying takeout,” she said. “There are so many boxes.” | “因为每个人都买外卖，”她说。“那些饭盒特别多。” |
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