Where to Celebrate Lunar New Year in the U.S.

Lunar New Year is Chef Sarah Cai's favorite holiday, and this year she's going all out to celebrate, with a lion dance performance, a baijiu class to introduce China's favorite spirit, a rave with specialty cocktails like frozen mango daiquiris with durian salted cream, and a Lantern Festival celebration in collaboration with the Brooks Museum that includes cultural performances, a local DJ, and lanterns sent into the sky.

Cai will also host a Lunar New Year bar crawl with a couple of other locally owned Asian restaurants, featuring limited edition cocktails and a zodiac T-shirt prize for guests who try them all. The food finale is a dumpling party with an open bar, music, and a mahjong table. Dumplings symbolize prosperity, so eating more attracts more good fortune.

“Spending hours together with all my relatives around a large table making dozens and dozens of dumplings is one of my favorite food memories,” Cai says. “We want to bring the community together to hang out and eat our weight in dumplings.”

Chef Emily Yuen recently took the reins at this Michelin-starred restaurant, and one of the tasting menu highlights is lo hei, or yú shēng, a raw fish prosperity salad popular in Malaysia and Singapore. “Everyone gathers around the table, chopsticks in hand, tossing the salad high into the air,” Yuen explains. “The dish is layered with texture, color, and symbolism, and the higher you toss, the more prosperity and good fortune you invite for the year ahead.” Yingtao's version features dry-aged hamachi and the option to finish the dish with uni or caviar that guests can playfully toss before sharing, creating a moment of movement and collective intention at the table. In the spirit of lucky red envelopes, guests will also receive custom scratch-off cards with the chance to win prizes such as a tasting menu, a cocktail, or a wine pairing on their next visit.

A $55 prix-fixe feast kicks off the Year of the Horse on February 17, followed by a week of Lunar New Year specials. Chef/owner David Schuttenberg puts his spin on classic lucky Lunar New Year dishes, including pork and beef dumplings shaped like ancient gold ingots to symbolize wealth, and long, uncut noodles for a long life. Whole proteins like Cantonese whole steamed fish and Cantonese whole roasted duck represent abundance, completeness, and surplus.

“Whole steamed fish is one of my favorite dishes of all time, simply prepared with scallions and ginger,” Schuttenberg says. “Its beauty is in its simplicity and clean flavors. It's the perfect dish to start welcoming spring.”

The experience is rounded out with nian gao, sweet sticky rice with eight treasures, and tangerine and orange baijiu, all symbolizing wealth, luck, and progress.

This new Denver restaurant will serve a special menu full of foods symbolizing wealth, luck, and prosperity, including crystal dumplings, whole soy sauce chicken, and tangyuan, or glutinous rice balls, for dessert. There's also hot pot, paying homage to chef and co-owner Darren Chang's family tradition of gathering with extended family to celebrate both the Lunar New Year and his late grandmother's February birthday.

“We had a large round dining room table that would go unused except for two occasions, Thanksgiving and hot pot,” he says. “Growing up, my mom was primarily vegetarian, so there was always a nice spread of vegetables.” Chang's favorite hot pot vegetables are corn, pan-fried taro, and enoki mushrooms because they soak up so much flavor from the broth. There's always a dipping sauce on the side, made with a combination of soy, rice vinegar, chili sauce, sesame oil, scallions, garlic, and raw egg yolk. “My grandmother would put my remaining egg white in a ladle and gently lower it into the hot pot to cook and serve with a bowl of hot pot broth to finish the meal.”