Lunar New Year: Metro Vancouver chefs tastefully welcome the Year of the Tiger
Metro Vancouver chefs are celebrating with especially artful dishes
A.Bento.
THE YEAR OF the Tiger roars in on February 1, the zodiac sign symbolizing bravery and strength. Family and feasting are central to the holiday celebrated across Asia and the diaspora, beginning on the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ending on the first full moon, 15 days later.
Here are a few ways local culinary artists are welcoming the Lunar New Year through especially artful food.
Sun Sui Wah. Photo by Leila Kwok
Poon choi
The multi-layered Cantonese dish, also known as pen cai, symbolizes harmony and prosperity and can be traced back to the Song dynasty, more than seven centuries ago. Its name translates to “basin cuisine”, since it was originally served in wooden basins. Each of the traditional ingredients, prepared separately, holds special significance: sea cucumber represents generosity and fertility, for instance; abalone symbolizes abundance; and black moss relates to wealth.
Served family-style, Sun Sui Wah’s version features 16 premium ingredients, including those mentioned above as well as fish maw (representing abundance and bountiful harvest), dried oysters, and dried scallop. Customers get to keep the poon, or pot. Chef Man has also created a Lao Fan dinner set and rice cake gift sets to go.
Chefs Choice Chinese Cuisine is offering poon choi with shrimp, pork knuckles, marinated chicken, sea cucumber, dried oyster, squid, and more, while Coquitlam’s M Café’s rendition features abalone, fish maw, sea cucumber, dried oyster, black moss, shiitake mushroom, free range chicken, prawns, fish balls, Chinese cured meat, vegetables, and fried sticky rice. The latter comes with a complimentary dessert: lotus paste tapioca pudding with sweet pastry.
Potluck Hawker Eatery. Photo by Rich Won
Yu sheng
This dish is also called the “prosperity toss”: using chopsticks, people toss food high up in the air for good luck. It’s one of eight courses that make up Potluck Hawker Eatery’s Year of the Tiger Feast. Drawing from his heritage, chef Justin Cheung incorporates Malaysian, Singaporean, and Chinese flavours in the takeout meal (available January 31 and February 1). The Potluck Prosperity Toss features local Albacore tuna, smoked B.C. salmon, julienned vegetables, pomelo, cashew, wonton chips, and plum dressing. (Other highlights on the menu are hot and sour coconut mushroom soup with galangal, lemongrass, chili jam, fresh lime juice, and sawtooth herb; truffled soy sauce chicken; and whole pompano lab, a whole fish; and kuih lapis a traditional nine-layer steamed rice cake.)
At Richmond’s Cask Whisky Vault within the new Versante Hotel, the family-style Prosperity Salad (available February 2 to 6) is prepared with kombu-cured ora king salmon, green tea soba, shredded vegetables, shiso, pomelo, and yuzu umeboshi (sour, salty pickled plums). Diners are encouraged to make a wish out loud while they toss. Cask’s sister dining establishment, Bruno, is ringing in Year of the Tiger with an elaborate feast that includes lavender truffle duck, whole roasted seabream, saffron shellfish tagliatelle, and more.
Heritage Asian Eatery.
Nian gao
Nian gao, or sweet rice cake, is an auspicious dessert for Lunar New Year, symbolizing progress, growth, and advancement. Typically made simply with sugar, water, and regular and glutinous rice flours, they’re enjoyed or given as gifts in hopes of a better year ahead. The dish is on the celebratory menu at Heritage Asian Eatery from January 28 - February 6, the Lunar New Year Feast for Four available for take-out or dine-in. The meal also features cured Chinese hamand prawn dumplings (artfully shaped like Chinese ingots painted with a gold streak), chive pockets, sticky rice buns, gai lan, biang biang hoodless with XO dressing, and more.
Hot pot
In a nationwide first (through a sponsorship by Resopn Wealth Management), Liuyishou Hot Pot has released 28-day-aged Angus beef specifically for hot pot, in two cuts.
For the Hot Pot Seafood Pack from Fanny Bay Oyster Bar and Shellfish Market, Taiwanese-born chef Tommy Shorthouse has included Manila clams, geoduck, oyster meat, scallops, and prawns, ready to cook at home.
A.Bento
Boxed goodies
A.Bento restaurant puts a contemporary West Coast spin on traditional Taiwanese cuisine. This Lunar New Year, it has various Tiger Gift Boxes on offer, including Box A, a collaboration with Buttermere Patisserie, with house-made XO sauce and pineapple spicy sauce as well as Buttermere’s snowflake crisps and koi candy. Box B has those first two sauces plus spicy sauce and garlic sauce. (Separately, Buttermere is also offering a Year of the Tiger cake.)
Little Fox Bakehouse.
Sweets
At Richmond’s Little Fox Bakehouse, chef Eric Ho is making all sorts of treats to celebrate. The Chinese New Year cookie box has red velvet cookies, black sesame butter cookies, sesame cookies, orange shortbread, and matcha orange linzer sandwich cookies), while the Tiger Macaron Box is filled with black sesame tiger macaron, orange macaron, and shortbread. He has also created a Year of the Tiger chocolate mousse cake with mandarin orange crémeux.
Shangri-La Vancouver Chinese New Year Celebration Collection by Buttermere features matcha snowflake crisp (akin to nougat, but not as sweet, made with freeze-dried fruit and a milky marshmallow mixture); koi fish candy (koi represents fame, family harmony, and wealth); and YuanYuan ManMan, round butter cookies and chocolate mendiants. YuanMan means satisfactory, consummate, and perfect, while yuan means circle. In Chinese culture, the circle stands for “fulfilled”, “oneness”, “perfection”, and“unity”. More specifically, it’s the process of something coming full circle that bears the most importance.
Puddings make for a popular Lunar New Year gift. Kirin Restaurant’s chefs have come up with several varieties types this year, including Chinese New Year cake, water chestnut, and black sesame. (Savoury flavours are available, too: Chinese radish and taro root.)
As a winner of the 2021 Chinese Restaurant Awards’ Critic’s Choice Signature Dish Award, the White Rabbit cookie at Kouign Café is Chef Andrew Han’s homage to his childhood memories of Chinatown. Packaged in a bamboo steamer, the White Rabbit Cookie gift set comes with 12 mini White Rabbit cookies and three dipping sauces (jasmine caramel, black sesame caramel, and chrysanthemum honey). The set is part of Scotiabank Feast of Fortune Lunar New Year celebration supporting St. Paul’s Foundation, raising funds the Providence Research Institute at the Jim Pattison Medical Centre. The 2022 Gift of Fortune also features a premium Chinese tea set curated by second-generation tea master Eliza Lam in a special collaboration with Lam Kie Yuen Tea Co. Ltd, a globally renowned tea supplier based in Hong Kong. Included Supreme White Peony tea, especially delicate.
Shangri-La Hotel.
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