How Asia Became a Delta Hot Spot

Shortly after Jarrett Wrisley arrived in Bangkok in 2008, the global financial crisis hit the media industry, forcing outlets to slash budgets. Wrisley, a food and travel journalist, saw his opportunities to write rapidly diminishing, so he pivoted to the only other thing he knew how to do: cooking. In September 2010, Wrisley opened Soul Food Mahanakorn, serving northern and northeastern Thai fare in the capital’s trendy Thonglor neighborhood. The restaurant helped Bangkok, always renowned for its street food, establish itself as a buzzy high-end-dining challenger to more established regional food destinations such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Sporadic upheaval—including a coup, riots, and occasional floods—did not stymie the seemingly endless stream of visitors to the country: In 2019, Thailand welcomed about 40 million foreign tourists.

But on January 13, 2020, a traveler from Wuhan who was visiting Thailand tested positive for COVID-19, marking . Bangkok’s restaurants, sensing that the disease could be a major event for the industry, complied with restrictions, expecting to reemerge , and scant support delivered to the industry, leaving restaurant owners to largely fend for themselves. This summer, Wrisley, a former