Celebrate Lunar New Year with The Star Sydney’s Festival of Abundance

It’s called the Festival of Abundance for a reason. The Star’s signature restaurants have created limited-edition dishes only available during Lunar New Year, so don’t think twice. Beginning with The Star’s chic Japanese restaurant Sokyo, which is serving what is quite possibly Australia’s most expensive lobster sashimi platter coming in at a lucky $888 and featuring 12 kinds of fish and lobster. There’s also a lovely dish of steamed John Dory with ginger shallot, housemade five spice chilli oil, cucumber and celery.

Over at Flying Fish, new executive chef Adam Hall will be serving fresh, succulent woodfired yabbies with saltbush and ginger, as well as steamed coral trout with bush tomato – both dishes designed to represent prosperity with their bright colours. Speaking of prosperity, at Italian casual eatery Cucina Porto you can get your hands on a slice of lobster pizza with confit lobster tail, spiced crumb, smoked trout roe and oregano, and finished with a gold leaf, of course. Finish with a ‘Tray of Togetherness’ dessert platter featuring chocolate truffles, mini fruit mousse, almonds panforte, lollies, amaretti biscuits and mini cannoli.

Meanwhile, The Star’s steakhouse Black Bar and Grill has created three dishes for the festival. The first is a steamed hapuka with scallop dumpling, gai lan and soy ginger dressing. Next, king crab legs are cooked in the charcoal oven and served with XO sauce and shallot. There’s also a pandan crème brulée with charred mango and coconut sorbet.

You’ll find four special dishes at Luke Nguyen’s Southeast Asian eatery Fat Noodle, with highlights including a Vietnamese braised pork belly with pickled mustard, 63°C poached egg and thit kho sauce; and a roasted spatchcock with spiced crumbs and osmanthus sauce.

Lastly, G&Tea are offering a Lunar New Year high tea for $88 per person. Enjoy both sweet and savoury bites such as beetroot and ginger cured Tasmanian salmon with coriander and lime; Spencer Gulf king prawn toast; mandarin crème caramel; and green tea and red bean roll cake.

Have you heard of Aqualume, The Star’s dazzling show held at the Grand Foyer? It’s an aerial acrobatic spectacular featuring lasers, light, water and digital art (think a compact Cirque du Soleil). As part of Lunar New Year and The Star’s Festival of Abundance, Aqualume will wow audiences nightly at 8.30pm, 10.15pm and 11.15pm on Friday and Saturday evenings from January 20, and is free for all to watch.

The Star’s very own gallery and bar, the Michael Reid Art Bar, which marries the best of both worlds, is teaming up with the Vermilion Gallery of Contemporary Chinese Art for an innovative exhibition, Ink+: A Celebration of Lunar New Year 2023. As the name suggests, the exhibition will focus on ink and its ongoing significance in Chinese culture. Stroll around with a drink in hand and marvel at the works by fourteen up-and-coming and established artists based in Melbourne, Sydney, Beijing and Tibet. While you can expect to see ink front and centre, it'll be used in various art forms such as paintings, calligraphy, sculptures, and mixed media. Yeqin Zuo, director at Vermilion Art, says, “Ink+ is to give us a taste of the diversity and development of contemporary ink, an art with evolution and revolution from Tang Dynasty.”

Sydney already has a Big Prawn, so naturally, it’s time for the Big Rabbit. Or rabbits, in the case of The Star, which is going all-out this Lunar New Year by having 56 large bunny statues dotted all over the property. The oversized bunnies, which come in bright red, pink, green, gold, purple, blue and yellow, will only be around during the two-week Festival of Abundance, so we absolutely recommend that you go and check them out and take a photo. And who knows? Maybe you’ll come away with a bit for extra luck.