What to eat for Chinese New Year?

Not sure if this post belongs here, as I won't be in Chicago next weekend, but...

What are some dishes, small and large, to keep an eye out for? What different regional dishes (Hong-Kong/Cantonese, Mandarin/Taiwan, and so forth) might we expect to see?

Of course were I to be in the second city the weekend of Jan 28-29, the second part of the query would be 'where'.

I'm no expert, but I know of a few things associated with Chinese New Year:

Anything round. There's meaning behind this that I'm not sure, but round like scallops are typical.

Gold dishes, especially, I understand, the sesame balls typically eaten at dim sum.

Noodles. Long life I believe.

Fish, again there's symbolism that I forget.

Here's a link to a great meal with the Zim family, the VI family, and our coach for the night, Shirley the Hammer on a past Chinese New Year at Happy Chef (one of the great underappreciated resturants in Chicago IMHO!). Have fun!

A quickie google search revealed the following:

Chinese New Year Home Page wrote:On New Year's Day, the Chinese family will eat a vegetarian dish called jai. Although the various ingredients in jai are root vegetables or fibrous vegetables, many people attribute various superstitious aspects to them:


* Lotus seed - signify having many male offspring

* Ginkgo nut - represents silver ingots

* Black moss seaweed - is a homonym for exceeding in wealth

* Dried bean curd is another homonym for fulfillment of wealth and happiness

* Bamboo shoots - is a term which sounds like "wishing that everything would be well"

* Fresh bean curd or tofu is not included as it is white and unlucky for New Year as the color signifies death and misfortune.





Other foods include a whole fish, to represent togetherness and abundance, and a chicken for prosperity. The chicken must be presented with a head, tail and feet to symbolize completeness. Noodles should be uncut, as they represent long life.

In south China, the favorite and most typical dishes were nian gao, sweet steamed glutinous rice pudding and zong zi (glutinous rice wrapped up in reed leaves), another popular delicacy.

In the north, steamed-wheat bread (man tou) and small meat dumplings were the preferred food. The tremendous amount of food prepared at this time was meant to symbolize abundance and wealth for the household.

for more on the New Year go here.

I'm married to a Singaporean and have many friends that grew up in Asia, so here's my two cents...

Foodwise, the noodles are really important for longevity.

For our Chinese New Year dinners, my husband always prepares a "fish salad" which sounds gross, but it's like taking the popular Chinese chicken salads that they have at Panera and Cheesecake Factory and replacing the chicken with smoked salmon. Yum.

The whole chicken is another thing that we always have for auspicious reasons.

I'm remembering something about vegetables, particularly mushrooms, but it's muddled in my head.

A great ending to the meal is pineapple tarts, which are essentially a butter cookie with pineapple jam. There are many different "grades" of the store bought ones. When I was in Singapore, I stocked up on the ones sold at a business that primarily operated as a fruit store. They made the jam for the cookies, and they were great!

I'll post more as I remember the other stuff.

My mother grew up in northern China and was familiar with the northern tradition. As kids we used to eat boiled rice ball dumpling filled with sweet bean paste in the new year eve; boiled pork/chives dumplings dipped in vinegar on the first day of new year; fried bean/pork noodles on the second day and boiled "round dumplings" on the third day. Other parts of China including Canton and Shanghai have different tradition. I recalled eating turnip cakes (Chinatown dim sum menu); stir fried rice gluten with pork and nappa. Snacks include sweet lotus seeds etc.

Nowadays I take my family to watch New Year celebration in Chinatown on Cermak and Wentworth. They have programs such as Lion Dance. Need to go there early to find a place to park.

This gives me an opportunity to tell one of my favorite Chinese-food stories.

It was Chinese New Year in Windsor, Ontario, and we were having dim sum at Ruby's, about which I have no idea whether it still exists. At the next table was a big Chinese-Canadian family. Mom was trying to get a little kid, maybe about 5, to eat a New Year's delicacy.

Kid: "But Mommy, I don't like it, and the inside tastes like dirt!"

So naturally, Himself had to order some.

That kid had it absolutely right.*

* I've since learned that what we subsequently referred to as "dirt cookies" are glutinous-rice cakes with a ground black-sesame filling, which sound better than they taste to this Western palate. I confess I've never learned to like most Asian desserts.

My wife and I were thinking of heading to Chinatown to check out the parade on Sunday.
We'd like to find a place to eat that might also give us a sample of the culture.
Any tips on where to go?
One big obstacle is that my wife is a vegetarian.
Also, any suggestions on where to park?
Thanks
C

HI,

There is parking under the L-tracks. The preferred parking lot is bordered on 22nd Street/Cermak Road on the south, Archer AVenue on the north and Wentworth Avenue on the west. This lot gives you a coupon, which most Chinese restaurants place endorsement sticker. Your first 3 hours is $1.50, which is usually more than enough time.

Your vegetarian wife can at least eat chive dumplings and steamed buns filled with bean paste. You may have to order from the regular menu to accomodate her.

There are many threads on LTH on dim sum. You can check:

- dim sum in general
- dim sum at bakeries
- dim sum in the western suburbs
- soup dumplings
- make it yourself

Welcome to LTH and happy year of the dog!

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:There is parking under the L-tracks.

I did that once.

Pigeons.

Never again.

Hammond

Thanks.
Great info!
C

Curry71,

The entire parking lot is not entirely under the L-tracks. However tomorrow there will be a surge of people for the dragon dancing and other activities, that you will be pleased to find parking wherever you can.

Regards,

I've just read a bunch of the dim sum posts, especially appreciating Gary's helpful recommendations.

What I didn't see (but may have missed) was a suggestion regarding
timing of a weekend visit -- especially to the Phoenix. What time would we want to be there on a Saturday or Sunday to avoid a wait? Also,
what's the parking situation? These are especially relevant as I have
bad knees, so walking or standing for long times is difficult.

In view of this, if the Phoenix parking situation is not good, I'd appreciate a compromise suggestion.

Chinese New Year: Food Traditions and Symbolism @ Slashfood

E.M.

I have only been to Phoenix 3 or 4 times, but whenever we went on a Sunday there was no line if we got there by about 10 am. Anytime past 10:30 seems to start getting very busy. We have actually found street parking every time as well. Of course, this weekend is the Chinese New Year and so I suspect it will be especially crowded.

Hi,

Early birds can have dim sum at the bakeries as early as 7 AM.

Seven Wives on Wentworth opens at 7:30 AM with Hong Kong style Chinese breakfasts.

When you come that early you are long at your next destination without fighting the crowds who will arrive much later.

Regards,

As an ABC I don't know a lot of the symbolism but I think a lot of it is based on things that sound the same:
eg -- Nian Gao (sticky rice cake - looks like a disc noodle) sounds like Nian (year).

We usually take the train (red line) or the #62 Archer bus to avoid parking at all . . . and you are above the pigeons

I think a lot of the restaurants along Wentworth are older - taiwanese and cantonese mainly. There are some good ones in the New Chinatown Mall. Lao Sze-chuan is great for spicy stuff. Shui Wah is very good for dim sum - comes out from the kitchen - not on a cart so it is hot but you can't look at it - you can point at the food on other peoples' tables as they are very close together. I think one set of cooks are there in the AM to make the dim sum and the other chef and his staff do the dinners.

Happy new year greeting (I think it means something like I wish you health and wealth):
Gong Xi Fah Tsai (mandarin)
Gong Hay Fat Choy (cantonese)

Milo wrote:As an ABC I don't know a lot of the symbolism but I think a lot of it is based on things that sound the same:
eg -- Nian Gao (sticky rice cake - looks like a disc noodle) sounds like Nian (year).

Actually "Nian Gao" (translated literally as Year Cake) stands for "Nian Nian Gao Sheng" meaning moving higher every year (for work, school, etc)...

May work for some people, but I am still waiting to be CEO of some Fortune 100 company... hehehehe =)

Dragon gives good luck to hair salon!



Man in dragon, boy with blankie.

I have to say the Chinese New Year parade was a little punk. A couple of not very large dragons, then some politicians and Ronald McDonald... the best thing was the Irish bagpipers. More fun was being in the Chinatown Square Mall when the dragon came by all the shops; you could go right up to him and the drummers and watch as he interacted with the shops. The kids insisted on going in the dried food place while the dragon was in there, where they were immediately offered a free taste of dried sea urchin guts or something. (Actually it was dried kumquat, which was puckeringly pungent; Liam's sample entered and left his mouth with amazing speed.)

Afterwards we looked around the mall for a restaurant that wasn't packed and spotted a small, apparently new dim sum house and pastry shop at the far east end called Tasty Place. The ladies were nice and trying hard under what was surely the crush of 8 times as much business as they've ever had on any other day, but I found it to be very Average Place, shrimp over pork dumpling pretty tasty, pork crepe okay, pot stickers seemingly brought straight from the Orient by the famous explorer Trader Joe.

We too went down today for the parade and to look around but didn't really find any place to get in to eat at. We ended up meandering around a bit and heading back home. I have to agree the parade was a little blah but it seemed like most of the kids down there really enjoyed seeing the dragons today.

bit belated but... indeed we sealed our CNY hotpot dinner @ Mandarin Kitchen with Shanghai style fried rice cake.

rice cake in Mandarin is: "nien gao", literally, "year cake". if you play on the alliteration, also means "may your year rise higher". i don't buy into the rest of the symbolic shenanigans as every other Chinese dish is considered good luck or good feng shui for one reason or another, but the nien gao is pretty much the most prosperous thing for new years by defnition.

also, if you do order fish for Chinese New Years, do NOT flip the fish, especially if you work in the "shipping industry" (like I do). you don't want your ships (and now planes) to flip and wreck...

btw, one more reason why M.K. is worth saving: the shanghai stir fried nien gao was just about perfect. nien gao was al dente, cooked in a burning wok yielding the perfect iron wok smell/flavor. 99% of all individual slices were separate and well intermixed with other ingredients (slices of pork, cabbage, shittake mushroom and bamboo). twas a bit sweet to offset the pungent soy sauce. a great dish to offset the spice heavy hotpot soup bases.