CW: What are some of your favorite childhood memories surrounding Lunar New Year?
KP: The first day of the Lunar New Year is actually my dad’s birthday. Growing up I didn’t understand why we would have a cake for him and also a lion dance.

My favorite part of the Lunar New Year is the lion dance. Every year we do that in Kopitiam, and we hire people who come and do the dance. When I was back home in Malaysia, the lion dance would come early in the morning and they would hang up all these vegetables and oranges from the balcony (for the lion dancers to take). And at night my favorite thing was the fireworks. Not so much the eating part—you have your entire family sitting at the table asking you questions you probably don’t want to answer.

CW: How do you celebrate Lunar New Year now?
KP: I have been away from my hometown and my family for about 15 years now, and I don’t have any family members with me. Most of the time I spend is in Kopitiam. Good thing we’re actually in Chinatown, so we can see some Chinese New Year celebrations. We’ll continue to do the yee sang salad at Kopitiam this year, everybody loves that.

I used to have a group of friends that would get together every Lunar New Year—we’re actually four different couples. But basically this year, except for one couple everyone else is breaking up so…[Laughs]. I just went through a divorce, another couple who has been together for 13 years just went through a divorce. But this year, I don’t have any plans yet. 

Chef Eva Chin – Yan Dining Room, Toronto

Chef Eva Chin was born and raised on her grandmother’s farm in Kahuku, Hawaii, to a Hawaiian Samoan Chinese mother and a Chinese Singaporean father. She has helmed many prestigious North American restaurants, including Royal Dinette and Boulevard Kitchen and Bar in Vancouver, British Columbia, Kojin by Momofuku in Toronto, and Avling in Toronto. She currently heads Yan Dining Room, a micro restaurant within Hong Shing Restaurant Group in Toronto. Stay tuned to learn more about her in next month’s edition of Stir Fried.

CW: Growing up, what were some foods your family ate for Lunar New Year?
Eva Chin: My family has Singaporean, Chinese and Hawaiian in it, and something that was really shared amongst all three cultures is actually a form of mochi. In Hawaii we make butter mochi. On the Chinese side of my family, we make nian gao, which is rice cake. And then the Southeast Asian side of my family makes kuih, which is another form of rice cake. It’s pretty incredible, because three distinct cultures share one thing.

Words are very important. Auspiciousness is very important in our family so we have whole fish, whole chicken—things that are whole. Back in Hawaii, when we celebrate our luaus and our dinners, things are always presented whole, whether or not it’s Lunar New Year; whole pig, whole fish on the grill…so it always made sense when it tied into Lunar New Year. 

CW: What are some more Hawaiian Asian foods that you would eat?
EC: (In Hawaii) we have these packages of braised meat called lau laus (wrapped in lau leaves from the taro plant). In Hawaii, we cook it with just meat and some Himalayan and we cook it underground. But with the addition of our Chinese side, we mix sticky rice in with the lau laus and that only happens during Lunar New Year with my family. 

All the women in my family, all my aunties and my mom, they all gather together. It’s usually a big party, and I always help out with them. The guys, they always dig out the pits outside, so they do all the heavy work. We do all the roasting when it’s time, when all the meat is packed and ready to be roasted, I’ll take it out to cook in the EMU, which is the underground pit. 

The Singaporean side of my family makes this meat jerky called bakkwa. One year when my cousin brought it to Hawaii, we started adding Hawaiian sea salt and forms of spices into it. Our family has several versions, and my Hawaiian side of the family is really proud to learn this from the Southeast Asian side of my family. It’s a harmonious blend of two cultures. 

Chef Eva Chin currently heads Yan Dining Room, a micro restaurant in Toronto.

IG: @joshteewhy

CW: There are so many generational Asian immigrants in Hawaii that have really melted together. What are some uniquely Hawaiian Asian foods that Hawaiians might enjoy for Lunar New Year?
EC: There’s a type of donut that is eaten a lot during Lunar New Year that was adapted by the Japanese population in Hawaii, but it’s actually a Chinese Lunar New Year sweet dish. The Chinese name for it is sa yong. It’s a type of fluffy, beignet drop-style donut that we eat for Chinese dim sum and Lunar New Year, and when it was brought over to Hawaii, the Japanese adapted it with Okinawa brown sugar. And so it became this Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian sweet delicacy, and I mostly see it during Lunar New Year.

CW: Now that you’re living in Toronto, what does Lunar New Year mean to you?
EC: Lunar New Year took a really special meaning in my life in 2020 because of Toronto. So obviously 2020 was a year of COVID, and in total, Tonronto had eight or 10 lockdowns. It was also my first year moving to Toronto. I moved to the city and Lunar New Year was about to happen and I didn’t know what to do. So I started a Lunar New Year meal kit collaboration with another small Chinese restaurant in a time where we were so severely locked down that we had to figure out the entire menu and recipes over Zoom. We were the first restaurant to attempt a collaboration during the height of COVID and ever since that happened, the city kind of expected me to do a Lunar New Year menu every year. 

And in some ways I love it, because it really kick started my platform in Toronto cooking Chinese food. But more than ever, it also brought together communities that were never brought together. I had communities that were majority Caucasian folks sending me emails that some of their families are interracial. It was the first time they had access to a Lunar New Year meal kit to celebrate it with that side of the family, in this part of the town. Toronto is a city where people have to travel uptown to Markham to get good Chinese food, like in New York, you have to go up to Flushing. So at that time, to be able to offer a Lunar New Year meal kit in the heart of downtown during COVID was really a big deal, and I didn’t realize it until years after. And I think it is now my fifth year in Toronto, and I’ve only become more and more excited for Lunar New Year collaborations. And I think that’s one of the most magical things about Lunar New Year for me right now, is that it has become a chance for like-minded chefs to get together and share the nostalgic dishes or reinterpret it.

CW: What’s this year’s Lunar New Year menu going to be like at Yan?
EC: It’s my first Lunar New Year collaboration since Yan opened. So it is a big deal for me and my team. One of the dinners is a part two collaboration with Chef Nuit. She’s a very well-known Thai chef in Toronto. And last year (at Avling), we did our part one, and one of the first things I learned collaborating with her is that she was a descendant from Chinese ancestors who moved from mainland China. And so we deeply connected on that. And so both of our menus this year and last year are really focused on Thai Chinese roots and how it started, and how Chinese New Year is perceived in Thailand.

The second collaboration is with two other Chinese Cantonese chefs, and we decided to do a Cantonese-inspired feast of Seven Fishes. Seafood is really important in Cantonese cuisine. Toronto is a deeply Jewish Italian city—lots of deep history in that. For folks who grew up in Toronto, if you have an Italian friend somehow in your childhood memory, you’ve sat down to the feast of Seven Fishes. And so we wanted to bring a Cantonese-inspired reinterpretation: What would a feast of Seven Fishes be with Cantonese cooking and technique?