Celebrate the Year of the Rooster with a festive feast
Whether you celebrate Lunar New Year, or just love any excuse for a crab banquet, it's a great time to get the family together and celebrate with a swanky meal. It could be early morning yum cha filled with dumplings and pancakes, a long lunch with friends or a baller seafood dinner to ring in the new year. We rounded up the best Lunar New Year feasts across Sydney. Kung Hei Fat Choy!
There will be a few special additions to the menu in January to celebrate CNY. Order up a serve of pumpkin wrapped dumplings with dried shrimp, scallops and crunchy prawns. The yellow skinned and gold-gilded edge dumpling signify luck and prosperity. Also try the crisp wonton money bags, which are stuffed with prawns.
Spice Temple will be offering up a special Chinese New Year banquet menu for $95 from Mon Jan 23 to Sun Feb 5. Neil Perry and head chef Andy Evans have packed the menu with one-off dishes including Sichuan pickled cucumbers and shitake, Hunan-style soy beef and beetroot salad with crispy noodles, stir fried spanner crab with mung bean noodles, and Wagyu brisket with lucky money dumplings and baby eggplant.
Zilver's banquet menu has live seafood alongside traditional delicacies such as braised whole abalone, lobster and coral trout. The feast is designed to share between 10-12 people, with prices starting from $1098 for a whole table. There will also be lion dancers and a Prosperity Toss with salmon sashimi.
Upstairs at the Star you'll find the Fat Noodle doing Chinese New Year specials including lucky salmon Yu Sheng salad and a main stir-fry with jumbo prawns and Canadian scallops.
Enjoy a special menu of cold marinated tofu salad, a truffle oil infused chicken stir fry and sweet and sour garlic marinated fish served with crispy rice cake, alongside lion dances. New Shanghai will also be doing specialty cocktails like the Shanghai Sour and Sira-Shua and from each cocktail sold they'll donate $2 to the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation.
Black will be showcasing fresh seafood with their Chinese New Year specials this year. Order up southern rock lobster with wakame butter, bone marrow, chimichurri and roasted cipollini onions; or try Saikou salmon with sea herbs, orecchiette and golden broth.
The former-Rockpool site's new restaurant will be doing a special CNY degustation, which includes pork and prawn pot sticker dumlings, a spanner crab spring roll with shiitake and radish, scallop mousse, beef hanger steak cooked in lotus leaf, steamed John Dory with black mushroom and ham and a golden circle dessert. Bookings are essential and the banquet is available for lunch or dinner at $186 per person.
The Opera House will host Lunar Eats across all of its different dining destinations. Opera Kitchen are doing a special beer and dumpling combo, while Opera Bar will serve up oysters from black vinegar, ginger and shallot dressing.
Portside are doing a special feast of Silken chicken with shitake, rice and daikon followed by coconut ice cream with lychee jelly and red bean sauce. Bennelong will also be doing a one-off cocktail 8 Lucky Chickadees with fresh strawberry, pomegranate, nectarine and white rum.
We’ve picked out our highlights from this year’s festivities, which take place around Lunar New Year on Tuesday, February 5 and on to the weekend.
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