Marking the first new moon of the lunar calendars used by east Asian countries such as China and Vietnam, Lunar New Year is a time for celebration. What each celebration entails, however, varies country to country and even family to family. For some, it might involve gathering weeks ahead to prepare traditional foods like banh chung, rice cakes stuffed with pork and mung bean. (It’s considered bad luck to cook, clean or work during the first three days of the New Year.) For others, it might mean going out for dumplings or folding their own. So we spoke with five makers from the Milk Street Store to learn about their favorite traditions and memories.

Lisa Cheng Smith
Founder, Yun Hai Taiwanese Pantry

“For several years, my friend Jasmine and I would get together to throw epic Lunar New Year parties. When I lived in Chicago, I lived in a loft that I converted from a cold storage warehouse. It was very bare bones, but beautiful in its own way and not precious at all—no neighbors to complain about noise, no nice furniture to worry about spilling wine on and no walls... My favorite memory is standing behind the kitchen counter with her, impulsively deep frying random pieces of food in the deep fryer, and surveying a room full of close friends and beautiful strangers, most of them gathered around a projector screen performing YouTube karaoke. The food was amazing and we worked hard on it. We prepared cold jellyfish salad, red braised beef, cold chicken with ginger and scallion, dumplings, wontons, sticky rice shumai and so many other things. But ultimately the warm fuzzy feeling of all being together inside on a cold January night is what sticks with me the most.

Sonoko Sakai
Food Writer, Teacher, Maker of Sonoko Curry Powder

“When I was little, our family used to go out for dumplings in Chinatown, whatever part of the world we lived in that year. Now, I make the dumplings myself, some stuffed with pork, others with ground sesame and served in sweet ginger tea. In the late 1800s, Japan switched to the Gregorian calendar. It's so nice to be reminded of our heritage and traditions by celebrating the Lunar New Year, Japan's original New Year. What better way to do it than with food?

Kheedim Oh
Founder, Mama O’s Kimchi

“Before making kimchi for a living, I was a nightclub DJ for most of my adult life. New Year’s Eve was always amateur night, but it was a good working night because in-demand DJs usually got at least double your asking rate. The better New Year’s Eve was the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year... Growing up, Lunar New Year was always about celebrating with family, eating good food and receiving money from the elders for bowing and wishing them well. It was a big ceremony. You would kneel down before the elder, repeat a specific phrase that wished them well and then get between $20-$100, depending on who it was! Now, as I am older, the only elders that are really left are my parents. And going down to see them and wish them well has me feeling a little conflicted this year with the current raging pandemic. But certain traditions are worth keeping. Though this one will be a much more intimate affair, my wife and I are looking forward to reconnecting with my roots, eating some really good food and maybe scoring a couple twenties for gas money if we are lucky!”

KC Kye
Founder, K-Mama Sauce

“We would do the big bow. You would get down all the way to the ground in front of your elders and we would do that to our parents and especially our grandparents. After you do the big bow, they give you an envelope of cash. Most parents would give their kids $10, and some other well-off kids would get $20. But my grandparents, one year, gave us $400 dollars for one bow! It was fourth grade. The one thing I remember is that I knew it was a lot of money, so I was like: ‘Okay, how do I save this?’ I instinctively just thought I needed to open up a bank account... Another moment of the bow is that we’d get into our traditional garb called the hanbok. You’d need all of these layers and it was so much work. I hated it as a child. Now, they make it super easy and you can clip it on. I was just itching the whole time, but I remembered that one year when my grandfather gave me $400 and I was like: ‘I’ll wear this. I don’t care!’” (laughs).

Lisa Tran
Restaurateur and Founder, Tân Tân Café & Delicatessen and Tân Tân Sauces

“When we say we’re going to celebrate Tết we say “an Tết,” which literally means eating the New Year. We actually do all of our cooking in the week and, actually, weeks leading up to the New Year. This past weekend, we began making the Vietnamese New Year cakes. They’re sticky rice with coconut milk on the outside and inside is this creamy savory mung bean and then right in the middle is this strip of pork belly. You roll it super tight in banana leaves and use a little hammer to hammer it down and roll it into a log shape and steam it for hours and hours. And when you take it out of the steamer, you slice it. It’s actually a family affair to do it. We would make an assembly line and lay a mat out on the floor. There’d be a big huge bowl of ingredients. Everybody had a part in it. As kids, our job was to wash and wipe down the banana leaves... I remember feeling so proud when I was old enough to help and not be shooed away to go play in the corner… My dad would actually pan fry it so it would crisp up on either side and he would serve it to us with a little bit of granulated sugar on top. It was so time intensive and so much work to be able to do this, we could really only enjoy it this time of year.”

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Photo: Leah Nash