Pandemic Takeout Part 2

More suggestions for places to order takeout from, and a fun option for mixing it up a bit!

Since I last posted about ordering takeout during the era of social distancing, we have ordered food from a few more of our favourite restaurants. We have also been doing the pickups ourselves to ensure that the restaurants do not have to pay a commission to a delivery app, and had one especially bittersweet reaction to this which I'll describe in a bit.

We have ordered pickup beer from Shelter a couple of times, once for Brahm's birthday and another time when we were downtown anyway to pick up food from Number One Noodle House (call directly instead of using an app and get 10% off). If you have not tried Number One Noodle House yet, this is something you need to get on ASAP. My favourite shared meal for two consists of the smashed cucumber salad and the cumin egg noodles, but everything we've had here has been amazing.

Since the weather is finally not terrible, it's bike riding season once again! We don't live near a ton of independent restaurants but we have a couple favourites in the area. Angeethi Flame is close enough that we can bike over for pickup and get home in time to enjoy hot food.

My favourite takeout experience so far though was this Tuesday. We called October Asian Cuisine for an order, biked over to pick it up and then ate our food in the park across the street from the restaurant. This was such a fun "date night" type of activity! Picnics are highly underrated, and I plan to make them more of a habit this summer. (Normally I can't say no to October's dan dan ramen but didn't want to eat soup in a park, so we stuck to rolls and dumplings.)

I added a $10 tip over the phone to which the employee responded "Are you sure!?" When we picked up our food, we found an extra order of specialty sushi in the bag (a $10 value from the menu), with a note:

This was so lovely, but says a lot about how much the delivery apps take in commission, if a restaurant is willing to essentially comp our tip in free food as a thank you for ordering directly. So please if you have the time and ability to pick up your own order, skip Skip, and call restaurants directly.

On the note of riding bikes, it is SO nice to ride in minimal traffic lately. I hate a lot of things about what this pandemic is doing, but the traffic reduction is one silver lining. If you've been uneasy about riding your bike on the streets of Saskatoon, now is definitely the time to try it out. If you stick to residential side streets it's almost like the streets are totally closed to cars!