Spring Festival is in the air. The lunar New Year's Eve dinner, the last yet most splendid meal of a year, pays respect to the past year and expresses hope for a happy future.
Traditionally, people dine at home but preparing that feast is time-consuming and labor-intensive. More locals have started to dine out during the past few years to avoid the busy and messy kitchen. Five-star hotel restaurants are their first options if quality food, caring service and fancy ambience are their priority. On New Year's Eve, most tables in independent restaurants are double booked, which means earlier customers are pushed to finish their dinner quickly, leaving space for late customers.
Hotel chefs' ways of building a connection between the food and New Year celebrations vary.
"Foods should be auspicious to express a good wish," says Jacky Zhang, sous chef at Yi Long Court, The Peninsula Shanghai.
Chef Zhang focuses on presentation and names of the ingredients in the dish. For example, he serves poon choi (classic Cantonese New Year food with layers of braised seafood and vegetables served in a big bowl) for the coming festival. The round shape of the bowl represents completeness, perfection and gathering in Chinese culture.
Ingredients selected are better with names that are homophones for Chinese words meaning good things. His favorite lucky ingredients include haochi (蚝豉, a kind of dried oyster, pronounced the same as good news in Cantonese) and facai (发菜, a kind of algae, pronounced the same as making money).
Sam Gao, executive Chinese chef at Pudong Shangri-La, highlights the color in a dish.
"New Year food is better to be colorful and bright. I prefer shrimp and carrot, as red as fire, to make diners feel warm and touching. Egg dumpling (filled with minced pork) is also recommended. Its golden color and ingot shape is believed to bring fortune in the coming year," Gao says.
Johnny Xiang, chef de cuisine at Hai Pai, Andaz Xintiandi Shanghai, believes there's no festival food better than dessert, representing dolce vita, not to mention that locals generally have a sweet palate.
"I prefer preparing local desserts for New Year — for example eight-treasure rice (glutinous rice filled with red bean paste topped with eight different ingredients served in the shape of a bowl), jiuniang yuanzi (酒酿圆子, glutinous rice dumpling in fermented rice soup), sweetened rice cake and deep-fried spring roll filled with red bean paste," says Xiang.
This week we explore some of the best Chinese New Year's Eve set menus in the city's five-star hotel restaurants, from those serving authentic Shanghai cuisine to those providing classical Cantonese festival flavors. Many have prepared special surprises for Chinese New Year's guests, from free dishes to free wine.
