Chinese New Year at Golden Harbor
Happy Chinese New Year! The Year of the Snake begins Sunday, February 10th. I’m not ashamed to admit that, for me, Chinese New Year often revolves around food. This year was no different. Up until now, Peter and I always went to our favorite restaurant for Chinese New Year, where our friend Eric would cook up fantastic traditional feasts and we would happily devour them all. We felt a bit bummed we would miss his cooking this year, so when we saw the local Golden Harbor would serve a special Chinese New Year menu, we decided to give it a try.
Yeah, I only wish I could read all of this. That’s their regular menu, by the way. The Chinese New Year menu has a lot fewer items on it. Thank goodness, or we’d have to spend the next four days eating continuously to sample everything.
We were warned that Chinese New Year gets really busy at the restaurant, so we made reservations for dinner on Thursday. It was a smart move – the restaurant was packed.
Some tea?
Let’s check out what we ordered.
Stew duck with eight treasures (bamboo, water chestnuts, black mushrooms, carrots, shrimp, daikon radish, pork, fish cake):
Crispy seaweed prawn:
New Year dumplings (shrimp, pork, and sea cucumber (!)):
Spicy lamb chops:
Eight treasure sweet rice (dried fruits, longan, red bean paste, beans, nuts):
A sample plate (I had many of these):
Delicious!
Yes, all these dishes were for two people. That’s how we roll, folks. It’s must be a sight seeing us leave the restaurant staggering under the weight of half a dozen takeout containers.
In related news, we have a reservation to go back to Golden Harbor on Sunday. What? There are at least half a dozen other dishes we want to try.
Enjoy your weekend!
Q: Do you celebrate Chinese New Year? Any fun plans for the weekend?
what a fun celebration!
Everything looks delicious! I really want to try the sweet rice, never seen something like that before. In Russia most people eat dumplings at midnight to welcome the New Year :-)Oh, and I’ll be going to this place for brunch this weekend: http://www.cottagelajolla.com/ Hooray for food! ;-) And Happy New Year, Jessie!
I’ll have some seaweed-crusted prawns, please! haha, who would have ever thought to do that?! Yum.
Happy Chinese New Year! Apparently it’s the year of the snake. ewww
So fun! At least you can say that you celebrated to the fullest extent!
Yum!
Happy Chinese New Year! I did nothing to celebrate this year.
Last year my friend Tina and I went to a dumpling making party because I saw a poster for it at my gym. We were the only non-Chinese people there and at the front entrance they seemed confused as to how we heard about it. Once we got over the initial awkwardness of it all it was a good time.
I had to laugh at your story – glad to hear you enjoyed it in the long run! :)