With Lunar New Year falling in January this year, your waistline simply can't get a break. But at least this time, you can say that it's all for the sake of good luck.
By Reggie Ho.

After the Christmas and New Year abyss of getting stuffed and drunk, many in the Western countries are now switching to a slim-'n'-trim, zero-cal, low-fat, tasteless-'n'-bland diet. But not here. Happily, Hong Kongers need suffer no such abstemiousness, as we now have another sinful festival to endure. With Chinese New Year falling early on January 24 this year, the gluttons have yet another terrific excuse to eat to their hearts' content.

As China's many provinces have different dining cultures, Chinese New Year foods can vary from one part of the country to another. But the rule is pretty much the same regardless of where you are: On the last day of the year, the whole family sits together for a "gathering for the year" dinner, and an "opening the year" lunch is served on the first day of the new year to ensure a prosperous start.

In most parts of China, people simply buy the best ingredients they can afford and make the most decadent dishes to welcome the new year. But in Chinese communities where people have more disposable wealth and more time to care about finer details, superstition plays a big part in choosing dishes. Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shanghai, having enjoyed higher standard of living than most other parts of China for many decades, are the breeding grounds for this superstitious tradition.

Guangzhou is the birthplace of Cantonese cuisine, but Hong Kong is where it finds its way to the global market—and Cantonese people are super, super superstitious. There are certain dishes that many would stay away from during CNY. Plums, sounding like the word "worn," should be avoided at all costs; prunes are even worse, since they're not only made from plums but actually look worn. Other dining rules to remember during Chinese New Year include not having four or seven dishes in a meal ("four" sounds like "death," and only a meal after a funeral should have seven dishes since seven is a celestial number for the deceased) and not to eat other unlucky-sounding foods such as tofu ("fu" sounds like "negative").

Once you know what to avoid, you should remember what to look for. The most traditional CNY Cantonese dish is dried oysters with sea moss. It also contains other ingredients such as conpoy, Chinese mushrooms and vegetables, but the dried oysters and sea moss are emphasized since the former rhymes with "blessed event" and the latter with "get rich." Although this dish is not difficult to make and is often done at home, the freshness of the ingredients and recipes for the sauce decide how well it turns out. For guaranteed quality, we recommend heading to legendary Yung Kee, which won the HK Magazine Readers' Choice Award for "Best Chinese Restaurant" last year. At T'ang Court, pig's tongue is added to the dish to further the connotation. "Tongue," reading like "advantage" in Cantonese, is a popular lucky food; pig's tongue is chosen because it's big and it helps to complete the meaning of "big advantage." Another restaurant for the legendary lucky dish is Dynasty, which serves it in its New Year banquets. Other lucky dishes from T'ang Court include braised shark's fin with crab meat and crab roe (boding well for success at work) and stewed goose webs with shrimp paste and crab roe (connoting a handful of gold).

Fish, whose pronunciation sounds like "excess," is another must-have for Lunar New Year. Deep-fried food, which elderly Chinese usually warn the young to stay away from because it's too "heaty," is also welcome during festive times because the golden colors inspire the treasured metal. So what's better than having a deep-fried fish? A Northern-Chinese inspired deep-fried fish served with a sweet and sour dip can be had during CNY at Peking Garden Restaurant as one of the lucky dishes.

The early inhabitants of Hong Kong were Hakka people, the Chinese equivalent of the gypsies, and one of their traditional festive dishes is the heritage bowl, or "basin dish." Depending on how extravagant you want it to be, the dish can contain anything from dried oysters (which Hong Kong produced in abundance before the water turned to sludge) and sea moss to shrimp and any other seafood you can name. Each heritage bowl contains a dozen or more ingredients and they're carefully layered into a basin. It takes the chef's experience and knowledge to decide which ingredients go on the top layers and which on the bottom, and diners must eat from the top down and not dig inside. In Hong Kong, many places serve the heritage bowl, not only because of tradition, but for its connotation of fullness and richness. Restaurants that serve the dish during New Year include Dong and Chiuchow Garden Restaurant.

For the Shanghainese, round shapes are welcome on the dining table during Chinese New Year since they represent "wholeness," symbolizing the notion of having the whole family together. Usually, a Shanghainese family will serve eight small plates of cold appetizers for CNY dinner and place them around a "warm pot," a steamboat of dumplings, salted meat, chicken, shrimp and other vegetables. Although many Shanghainese restaurants in Hong Kong are going Cantonese during New Year to suit the local palate, traditional Shanghainese CNY dishes can be requested from restaurants such as Wu Kong Shanghai Restaurant. Keeping the tradition of serving appetizers in a circular shape, the banquets at China Lan Kwai Fong will start with appetizer combinations (five or eight varieties, depending on menu), named "five fortunes at the door" and "eight lucky stars," served on circular platter trays. Other festive dishes served at this hip Chinese restaurant include pan-fried sweetened glutinous rice with red-bean purée (also called "eight-treasure rice").

For some lucky munchies to take home, nothing beats Chinese New Year puddings. Chosen because pudding reads like "high" in Chinese, CNY puddings can be sweet or savory. The sweet recipes include the traditional red one consisting of rice flour flavored with rock sugar and the water chestnut recipe, while the savory one is basically a big turnip cake. Extra ingredients such as dried shrimp or conpoy can be added to suit different tastes. Many places sell these puddings, but for guaranteed quality, we recommend Tsui Hang Village, T'ang Court, The Peninsula Boutique (from Spring Moon) and Dynasty.

Other restaurants to choose as CNY dinner destinations include Lai Ching Heen, which will serve up a "Fat Choy" (“getting rich”) banquet for 13 at $13,980, Grand Hill, offering CNY banquets (10-12 people, $2,888-$4,688) with Taiwanese inspirations but the same lucky slogans, and Spring Moon, serving lucky banquets at $6,880-$8,880 (also 10-12 people). As you might as well have figured, eight is a lucky digit since it reads like "rich."