Lifestyle
Food holds special meaning on the Lunar New Year. Readers share their favorite dishes
NPR readers share the dishes they love most for the Lunar New Year.
Jing Gao; Alvina Chu; Amy Fedun; Beth Rogers-Ho; Alice Young; Elsy MektrakarnNguyen; Sarah Low; Anh Therese McCauley
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Jing Gao; Alvina Chu; Amy Fedun; Beth Rogers-Ho; Alice Young; Elsy MektrakarnNguyen; Sarah Low; Anh Therese McCauley
NPR readers share the dishes they love most for the Lunar New Year.
Jing Gao; Alvina Chu; Amy Fedun; Beth Rogers-Ho; Alice Young; Elsy MektrakarnNguyen; Sarah Low; Anh Therese McCauley
More than a billion people worldwide will celebrate the Lunar New Year on Saturday as they usher in the Year of the Dragon. It’s called Tet in Vietnam, Tsagaan Sar in Mongolia and Seollal in Korea. Whether it’s celebrated in Asia or abroad, the annual holiday is a time for many to honor elders, spend time with family, reflect on the past year and wish for a lucky year ahead.
Candied coconut, or mut dua, is a common dish seen at Vietnamese New Year celebrations.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Candied coconut, or mut dua, is a common dish seen at Vietnamese New Year celebrations.
Suzanne Nuyen
Like most holidays, a bountiful spread of food is essential to Lunar New Year festivities. In my Vietnamese household, rice cakes called banh chung and candied fruits called mut are as essential to the New Year as turkey and mashed potatoes are to Thanksgiving. Traditional foods vary across Asian cultures. Some have even evolved as Asian diaspora communities invite others to share in their traditions.
I wanted to know what dishes NPR readers couldn’t go without on the Lunar New Year. These were some of the dishes that stood out as favorites, plus one special recipe a reader created for her grandchildren.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity
Banh chung
Banh chung and banh tet are quintessential parts of a Vietnamese Lunar New Year meal.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Banh chung and banh tet are quintessential parts of a Vietnamese Lunar New Year meal.
Suzanne Nuyen
Making banh chung involves a labor intensive process. Often, the entire family is roped in to help.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Making banh chung involves a labor intensive process. Often, the entire family is roped in to help.
Suzanne Nuyen
Vietnam’s quintessential Lunar New Year dish is a labor of love. Banana leaves are meticulously washed, then wrapped around sticky rice filled with pork belly and mung beans. The cakes are boiled for hours before they’re ready to eat. It often takes a whole family to make the dish.
For Yolanda Vo, the dish reminds her of her refugee parents, who brought their tradition to the U.S. nearly 50 years ago. Sahra Nguyen watches her mom make the “shockingly laborious” cakes every year. She wrote that she sees her mom’s love for her family in her dedication to making the dish. “I feel deeply grateful for the opportunity to enjoy each bite because I know it’s one of her biggest displays of love,” wrote Nguyen.
Hot pot
Alvina Chu loves hot pot for the new year because “the meal gathers us around the pot to commune with each other and enjoy our favorite bites.”
Alvina Chu
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Alvina Chu
Alvina Chu loves hot pot for the new year because “the meal gathers us around the pot to commune with each other and enjoy our favorite bites.”
Alvina Chu
Amy Fedun’s special hot pot includes whole grilled or baked fish and lamb chops.
Amy Fedun
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Amy Fedun
Amy Fedun’s special hot pot includes whole grilled or baked fish and lamb chops.
Amy Fedun
There are endless varieties of Hot pot across Asia. It’s also known as Chinese fondue or huoguo in China. In Vietnam, it’s called lau. In Japan: shabu-shabu. All the dishes involve cooking meats, noodles and vegetables communally in a pot of broth.
“It gathers the family around a single pot to linger and commune with each other,” Alvina Chu wrote. “Everyone gets to pick what they like — and the prep is no-stress for mom!”
Amy Fedun wrote that she loves a steamy pot on cold days. She tops her special hotpot with a whole grilled or baked fish, then stacks grilled lamb chops cut to look like bear paws on top of the fish. “There’s a [Mandarin] saying that literally goes, ‘you can’t have both fish and bear paw,’ meaning you have to make a choice between two desirable things,” wrote Fedun “Well, here at my new year’s table, you get to enjoy both.”
Fresh fruit
In Vietnam, a display of fresh fruit represents gratitude to your ancestors on the new year.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
In Vietnam, a display of fresh fruit represents gratitude to your ancestors on the new year.
Suzanne Nuyen
Anh Therese McCauley thinks durian is a “weird fruit,” but loves it on the Lunar New Year regardless.
Anh Therese McCauley
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Anh Therese McCauley
Anh Therese McCauley thinks durian is a “weird fruit,” but loves it on the Lunar New Year regardless.
Anh Therese McCauley
The highlight of Anh Therese McCauley’s Lunar New Year meals is when her mother brings out the durian fruit. It’s an acquired taste. Its smell has been described as similar to a gas leak. But many covet its custardy taste and texture, calling it “crème brûlée on a tree.” “It’s such a weird fruit, but we can claim it as ours in the Asian diaspora, and I can’t help but love that,” McCauley wrote.
Jessica Hoang’s Vietnamese fruit of choice is the mang cau, or custard apple. Her grandma always had it in her home during the new year. Her mother would tell her stories of growing up eating the fruit in Vietnam and using the seeds to play a marbles game. “My grandma was an intimidating woman — tough, cold and not afraid to be direct,” Hoang wrote. “But her way of showing she cared was giving us food and telling us to eat. In those moments, for a few minutes, a young me was able to be close to my grandma.”
Hainanese chicken
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen’s family always includes Hainan chicken rice as part of their Lunar New Year table.
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen
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Elsy MektrakarnNguyen
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen’s family always includes Hainan chicken rice as part of their Lunar New Year table.
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen
Elsy MektrakarnNguyen’s family has its roots in Hainan, China, just as this chicken and rice dish does. Hainanese migrants took the recipe with them when they migrated across Southeast Asia. The meal of poached chicken and garlic rice cooked in the chicken’s broth is now an iconic fixture in Singaporean street food.
MektrakarnNguyen’s family moved to Thailand before her mother was born. Though the new year, or Songkran, is celebrated there in April, her family continued to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Hainanese chicken, or khao man gai in Thai, was often part of the table of offerings to their ancestors.
“The garlic rice was precooked with LOTS of garlic and chicken fat,” she wrote. “My house would smell of garlic for days after cooking it. The smells of my childhood.”
Braised pork belly
Thit kho trung, or caramelized pork belly with eggs, is Kimberly Huynh’s favorite Lunar New Year dish. She loves how the meat falls apart after hours of braising.
Suzanne Nuyen
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Suzanne Nuyen
Thit kho trung, or caramelized pork belly with eggs, is Kimberly Huynh’s favorite Lunar New Year dish. She loves how the meat falls apart after hours of braising.
Suzanne Nuyen
Like many of the dishes mentioned above, a version of braised pork belly appears on many Lunar New Year tables across Asia. In Vietnam, hard-boiled eggs are added to the dish called thịt kho trứng. “Thịt kho paired with white rice is so comforting,” Kimberly Huynh wrote. “It braises for hours and it just falls apart when it’s ready to be eaten.”
Carrie Huang, from Taipei, Taiwan, enjoys a similar dish from Hangzhou, China called Dongpo pork. She wrote that the layers in the pork belly “represent seasons of the year and the good times and challenging times, similar to the rings inside the trunk of a tree showing the tough years and the good years.”
Jai
Sarah Low isn’t the biggest fan of jai, but she makes it because it reminds her of her culture and her late grandparents.
Sarah Low
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Sarah Low
Sarah Low isn’t the biggest fan of jai, but she makes it because it reminds her of her culture and her late grandparents.
Sarah Low
Sarah Low wrote that she used to hate jai, also known as Buddha’s delight or lo han jai. Still, she makes this vegetarian dish every year to remember her late grandparents and the culture she grew up in. “It’s a dish that is so different than what I cook all year long,” she wrote. “It’s a great way to remember the past and be mindful of the present.”
As for whether she still hates it? “I find I appreciate the flavors, but it’s never going to be my favorite,” Low wrote.
Rice cake soup
A view of Tteokguk during the Korean Food Foundation Luncheon at Bann on February 1, 2011 in New York City.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
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Mike Coppola/Getty Images
A view of Tteokguk during the Korean Food Foundation Luncheon at Bann on February 1, 2011 in New York City.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
It’s not Korean New Year, or seollal, without this rice cake soup called tteokguk. The coin-shaped rice cakes are thought to bring prosperity and riches, and its white color symbolizes a fresh start to the New Year.
Myung Armstrong garnishes her tteokguk with seaweed and julliened egg omelette. She wrote that the warm, savory beef broth and soft, chewy rice cakes bring “very happy memories making it with my mother.”
Dumplings
Mikayla Sanford’s makes Tibetan momos every year for the new year. Sometimes, her family can make hundreds of them.
Mikayla Sanford
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Mikayla Sanford
Mikayla Sanford’s makes Tibetan momos every year for the new year. Sometimes, her family can make hundreds of them.
Mikayla Sanford
Dumplings originated in Northern China and spread around the world. They are thought to bring fortune in the new year because they’re shaped like ancient Chinese money. Zhong dumplings, one of the most iconic street snacks of Chengdu, China, are a key part of Jing Gao’s Lunar New Year table.
Mikayla Sanford’s dumpling of choice are momos. They hail from Tibet, where the Lunar New Year is known as Losar. “Tibetan’s never had much flour or meat, so momos were always prepared for special occasions,” she wrote. “My family has been making them since I was a child. We even get together with huge steaming vats to make hundreds of momos during the new year.”
RECIPE: Alice Young’s “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings”
This recipe was provided by Alice Young.
Alice Young’s “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings”
Alice Young
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Alice Young
Alice Young’s “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings”
Alice Young
Alice Young has a unique dumpling recipe that she calls “No Fuss Grandchildren’s Chinese Dumplings.” She spent decades as a law partner and wrote that she had to be “creative and quick” with her food. She created this recipe for her “young, blue-eyed and blonde grandchildren.” They live in North Carolina, where Chinese communities are scarce. To adapt, Young’s recipe uses ingredients that are easy to find and childproof.
Alice Young came up with her dumpling recipe using ingredients that are easy to find in North Carolina and steps that her grandchildren can follow along with.
Alice Young
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Alice Young
Alice Young came up with her dumpling recipe using ingredients that are easy to find in North Carolina and steps that her grandchildren can follow along with.
Alice Young
Ingredients:
- rotisserie or any cooked chicken or meat or sausage, or firm tofu, diced
- chopped green onions or chives or cabbage, or a mix
- mayonnaise or vegenaise
- hoisin sauce
- oyster sauce
- sesame seed oil
- wonton wrappers
Directions:
- In a medium-size bowl mix equal portions of chicken/meat/tofu and chopped greens.
- Add mayonnaise, hoisin sauce, and a splash of oyster sauce and sesame oil until the mixture has the consistency of a sticky filling and tastes good to the sampling grandchild.
- Put a teaspoon of filling in a wonton wrap, lightly wet the edges of the wrap with water on your fingertips, and seal each dumpling in either a triangle or with a crimped edge, depending on the skill and interest of the grandchild.
- Optional- if the grandchild is forewarned and is not likely to swallow a small toy gold coin, sneak one into one of the dumplings as a lucky dumpling.
- Boil a pot of water and drop the finished dumplings in and cook for 6 minutes, until the dumpling wraps are cooked
- For fried dumplings. heat a pan with peanut or almond oil on medium heat, and fry the dumplings for 5 minutes until crispy on the bottom, add a splash of water and cover for 1-2 minutes until the water has evaporated and the dumpling wraps are cooked.
- Serve with soy sauce mixed with rice vinegar and sugar.
“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.
Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.
Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.
His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.
Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.
In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.
From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.
Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.
Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.
Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.
I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.
Tiny builders, big exchange
Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.
“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”
— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.
“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”
— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.
Something borrowed
Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.
“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”
— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.
“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”
— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.
2
1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.
A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life
Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.
“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”
— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.
“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”
— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.
Stuffed toys find a new purpose
Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.
“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”
— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.
“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”
— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.
A second helping
Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.
“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.
“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”
— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.
Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”
— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.
Next player up
Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.
“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.
In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.
Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)
Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.
Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.
That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.
It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.
If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.
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