Lunar New Year is the biggest holiday of the year across much of Asia, a multiweek celebration in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. You don't have to go to Asia for a taste of auspicious foods, though. There are great Chinese restaurants across the United States planning epic feasts to ring in the Year of the Horse, which begins on February 17. The celebration culminates on the full moon on February 27 with the Lantern Festival, marking the transition from winter to spring.
Good Fortune Co., Memphis, TN
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.”
Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco, CA
Chef Brandon Jew will be popping Year of the Horse vintage wines for Lunar New Year, so look for rare 1990, 2002, and 2014 vintages for the holiday, along with a special pairing with Rémy XO. Jew is also serving dan jiao, traditional Chinese egg dumplings shaped like gold ingots, for the first time, wrapping black truffle and black trumpet mushrooms in a thin omelet wrapper with beef and Shaoxing jus. “I’m very interested in researching symbolic New Year’s dishes and this dish really intrigued me,” he says. “I thought it would be nice served along with the beef dish we did for our New Year’s Eve tasting menu.”
Yingtao, New York, NY
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.
Empress by Boon, San Francisco, CA
Braised abalone, braised pork knuckles with truffles, and Dungeness crab topped with Kaluga caviar from China are all on the Chinese New Year menu at this Chinatown restaurant led by Malaysian chef Ho Chee Boon. “This is the year of the horse, which is known to be a lively, charming, and adventurous animal,” Boon says. “Our Chinese New Year menu was inspired by these adjectives.”
Visiting this modern revival of the historic Empress of China restaurant feels like a proper Chinese banquet. An antique woodwork gazebo greets guests upon arrival, and the terrazzo floor, circular moon gates, pagoda-like cornices, and contemporary Chinese tableware by Ruyi set the tone for the feast to come.
Beautiful South by Kwei Fei, Charleston, SC
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.
24 Suns, Oceanside, CA
Even when 24 Suns was a pop-up, chefs Nic Webber and Jacob Jordan went big for Lunar New Year, and this year they have a series of collaborations planned in their new brick-and-mortar space. In Buddhist tradition, it's important to eat only vegetables for a clean and peaceful start to the year, so on February 17, Webber and Jordan will collaborate with local vegan restaurant The Plot on a six-course vegetarian tasting menu.
The seventh day of the Lunar New Year commemorates the birth of humanity, and every diner will receive a birthday cake soft serve and candle to celebrate. On the 10th day, which marks the birth of the Earth Mother, 24 Suns hosts Fox Point Farms for a menu driven entirely by the farm to celebrate the earth's bounty. Longtime tea collaborators PARU Tea offer a coursed tea pairing to accompany the tasting menu and will release a new tea inspired by the Lunar New Year zodiac. An 18-foot longevity noodle will also be available on the à la carte menu.
“We'll have a Red Lantern cocktail on the bar menu, only offered to those who solve a riddle,” Webber says. “It's a tradition to solve riddles on lanterns to be allowed to keep the lantern, so guests that have the wits will be rewarded with this special seasonal beverage.”
Pig and Tiger, Denver, CO
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.”
Chyna Club
From February 15 to February 22, Fontainebleau's glamorous Cantonese restaurant is offering a four-course, family-style prix-fixe menu, including favorites like Szechuan ma la beef shank and tendon, poached lotus root with fermented sweet rice, and fish maw soup. Premium dried seafood, including braised abalone and sea cucumber, will be served, and larger parties of four to six will also enjoy steamed whole sea bass. Whole fish is a popular Lunar New Year dish because the word for fish is a homonym for abundance, and serving fish with the head and tail intact symbolizes a good beginning and end to the year. Parties of 10 or more will also receive wok-tossed Australian lobster with springy golden egg noodles.
