If you weren’t slurping noodles when the Year of the Rabbit rang in last night, it’s not too late to celebrate Chinese New Year. In fact, the holiday officially goes for two more weeks! A number of restaurants around town are offering special dishes and menus, most featuring traditional New Year eats including long noodles for longevity, dumplings for prosperity, and whole fish to symbolize the beginning of the New Year and the end of the old. Hop forward for Grub Street’s handy guide.
Annisa
Anita Lo’s “lucky” six-course menu features a Southeast Asian sweet-shrimp sashimi salad, sea scallops with rice cakes and Chinese sausage, and roasted duck in lettuce cups, among other dishes. The $105 prix fixe is available tonight.
Bao Noodles
This Vietnamese spot celebrates Tet starting today with a four-course prix fixe for $40.77 that starts with frogs legs or tuna spring rolls, moves on to Saigon-style egg-noodle soup, gives you a choice of fried or steamed sea bass main, and wraps up with molten chocolate cake and homemade ice cream. Call for reservations.
Buddakan
Today at the upscale Asian restaurant, choose from special Chinese New Year menu additions, including lobster and crab soup dumpling ($11), grouper and uni with “longevity” noodles in king crab broth ($24), and roasted suckling pig ($32).
Carmine Club Cafe
Noel Cruz definitely has opinions about where to go for Chinese New Year, but should you choose to spend it at his restaurant, there’s a $50 prix fixe offered this evening featuring, what else?, carrot salad, rabbit pasta, and half a fried rabbit — oh, plus carrot cake for dessert.
Dim Sum A Go Go
Like she does every year, owner Veronica Leung will offer an eight-course chef’s choice feast this evening to customers who make reservations for it. Exact price and offerings are T.B.D.
Joe’s Shanghai
The soup-dumpling specialist’s midtown location offers New Year dishes today and tomorrow, though the menu is in Chinese, so recruit a Mandarin-speaking pal or order with an open mind. Special dishes encompass vegetable ($16.95), oyster ($26.95), pork meat ($23.95), pork shoulder ($22.95), and crab ($38.95).
Macao Trading Co.
Celebrate today and tomorrow with one of two menu additions, meant for sharing: scallop-and-bone-marrow dumplings with kecap manis (a sweet soy sauce) ($13), and a roasted suckling pig with oysters on the half shell and pea-shoot sofrito ($40).
Oriental Garden
The seafood restaurant features special dishes at lunch and dinner for the next two weeks. Opt for dry oyster with seaweed ($28.95); braised goose feet with fish maw ($38.95); sauteed egg white with seafood ($28.95); crispy milk with scallop, dry squid, and shrimp ($32.95); and diced seafood in a lettuce wrap ($18.95).
Red Egg
The upscale dim sum parlor offers a choice of two special $55.95 menus this evening, both featuring seafood, dumplings, lamb chops with black peppercorn, and seasonal fruit.
Zengo
Richard Sandoval’s midtown behemoth leans mostly Latin, but for the occasion it’s getting in touch with its Asian side. Starting Monday and running through February 18, the restaurant will offer a slate of special dishes, including steamed scallop dumplings with sake-yuzu sauce ($11) and, yes, rabbit ($29) — prepared two ways — among other dishes.
