Chatswood Year of the Rat Festival presented by Willoughby City Council

Traditionally, I spend Lunar New Year with my family and mum usually creates nine traditional Cantonese style dishes for the festive period. This year was extra special too because my family from Canada joined us in Sydney to celebrate. There are also plenty tasty reasons to head to Chatswood for the Lunar New Year Festivities and you better make sure you bring a big appetite with you. Chatswood Year of the Rat festival promises to immerse you into the Asian culture of festivities with things to ‘see’ such as lion dance performances, traditional Chinese dance, music and drumming performances, kung fu and Chinese calligraphy demonstrations and art exhibitions; things to ‘taste’ and there are 35 dining venues in Chatswood with special menus during the festivities and plenty of things to ‘do’ such as origami workshops or take a workshop to learn Mandarin.

I attended the Prosperity Dinner at General Chao in the Chatswood Interchange hosted by the Mayor, Councillor Gail Giles-Gidney and Councillors of Willoughby City Council and also in attendance was Celebrity Chef Adam Liaw. We were treated with a sumptuous 9 course fine dining banquet with matching wines last night, which would be my 5^th Lunar New Year dinner in a row in the last week. General Chao didn’t disappoint starting off with a gigantic Prosperity Toss Salad or Yee Sang which even Adam Liaw said to me in conversation that was the largest Yee Sang salad he has ever seen. Me too. I must admit my family doesn’t create this type of salad or do the salad toss when we celebrate at home and I’ve only started to see it in the last few years. Last night’s salad toss was epic, ambitious and a fun way to connect with guests and partake in the belief that the higher you toss this prosperity salad with your chopsticks, the more luck you’ll bring into the New Year. Last night’s event was also a night I learnt the various ways people can hold chopsticks! There is another dinner Lucky Chatty Dinner Event to be held 5 February and you can book here.

On the Prosperity Dinner menu, we tasted the following and they were not your traditional style Cantonese food but a delicious and sometimes surprising fusion (you’ll know what I mean when you see ravioli in laksa) of South East Asia, Japan and Korea, which makes sense given the Executive Chef San Seewoo of General Chao is Korean:

Pacific Oyster with chilli and lemon granita, seaweed and chives

Cured kingfish with perilla leaf and yuzu yakult paired with Petit Cordon Prestige, Marlborough, New Zealand, wonton crisps, golden seaweed chips

Crips, golden brown prawn toast with spicy XO mayonnaise. This was everyone’s favourite.

Bo Ssam with honey glazed char siu pork, kimchi and pear salsa, lettuce and perilla leaf

Giant Yee Sang Salad with 28 seasonal fruit and vegetables, salmon sashimi, Chinese 5 spice, toasted sesame seeds, garlic crisps paired with 2017 Triennes Rose IGP Provence, France

Balmain bugs with house made fish cake, prawn ravioli and Shanghai noodles in a creamy laksa paired with 2015 Rudi Rabl ‘Spiegel’ Gruner Veltliner Kamptal, Austria