Restaurants in Toronto staying open for takeout and delivery have been an important part of keeping food options diverse and accessible during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we can hardly blame them when they choose to follow the lead of so many others and close temporarily.

Chinese restaurant Yueh Tung made the difficult decision to close on March 29, posting a heartfelt letter to social media.

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A post shared by Yueh Tung Restaurant (@yuehtungrestaurant) on Mar 28, 2020 at 4:46pm PDT

"We are completely committed to doing the right thing for our staff, our customers and our community," reads the letter, signed by the Liu family that runs the restaurant.

"That commitment has guided everything we have done over the last few weeks and it will continue to guide everything we do moving forward."

The letter continues, "At this time, our employees have decided they feel more comfortable staying home and would like to spend this time with their families. We respect and support this decision."

According to Jeanette Liu, the restaurant may reopen. "Our team no longer felt comfortable working the front lines," she says. "We told them at the very beginning if any members of our team decided they no longer wanted to stay open for safety and health reasons we would honour that decision."

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During this time we decided to create a mini series called Yueh Tung at Home :) we cant bring our food to you, but we know you can bring a little YT into your homes! Stir-frys are super, super easy and we wanted to share some of our knowledge with you. These dishes are perfect for you especially if you never know what to do with leftovers or if you have hungry, screaming kids in quarantine with you — you don’t have a whole lot of time to whip up a 5 course meal if you have little hangry ones waiting on you. First item on the list that was requested — MAPO TOFU. SHARE YOUR MEALS WITH US; take a photo and tag us ❤️ Ingredients: - 1 cup x minced pork (or any type of protein) - 2 cups x broth (any type; if you don’t have any, use water) - 1 tbsp x Oyster sauce - 1 tbsp x Light soy sauce - 1 tbsp x Dark soy sauce (or any other dark soy sauce — this is mostly for coloring and a touch of sweetness, so skip if you don’t have any; we are using our own House Dark Soy so don’t need a lot. If you have your own, use sparingly) - 1 tbsp x potato starch slurry (add about 3 tbsp of water to create slurry) - 2 heaping tbsp x pickled vegetable/ Sichuan peppered radish - 2 tbsp x Sriracha

A post shared by Yueh Tung Restaurant (@yuehtungrestaurant) on Apr 5, 2020 at 6:47am PDT

In the meantime, they've created a series called Yueh Tung at Home, posting recipes for dishes which were requested via social media. The first recipe they've shared is for their mapo tofu.