Nina Simonds visits the Imperial Seafood restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown and exposes you to the best traditional food served for Chinese New Year.

Nina explains the significance of each dish including Chicken, Dumplings, Mushrooms, Pork, Clams, Noodles, Fish and more. Happy New Year! Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Nina Says:

Chinese New Year (besides Passover) is one of my favorite holidays so it seemed VERY fitting to organize a Chinese banquet at one of my favorite restaurants in Boston’s Chinatown with friends and fellow colleagues from www.spicesoflife.com.

I remember my first Chinese New Year many years ago with my surrogate Chinese family in Taiwan. Even before the holiday, a room was emptied in preparation for all the gifts. Since my surrogate Chinese father was a successful businessman and my Chinese mother was a prominent cooking teacher with her own cooking school, many friends and business acquaintances would shower them with food gifts, as was the custom. There were expensive delicacies like bags of quality dried Chinese black mushrooms from Japan and Hong Kong, dried abalone, bird’s nest, and shark’s fin. I was amazed and amused to see boxes of canned items like Del Monte’s peaches and creamed corn with jars of Skippy peanut butter (real luxuries in the seventies). Someone even gave us a live chicken, which was kept in the side yard, fed generously by our maid for several days, and then to my surprise and discomfort, slaughtered for some (I must admit) mighty tasty chicken soup. The once empty room quickly filled with expensive candies, bushels of exotic fruits, and all kinds of other goodies.

On New Year’s eve, we gathered with the whole family for dumplings and Mongolian Firepot (a type of Chinese-style fondu). Everyone stayed up really late, welcoming in the new year and watching firecrackers. Then the next day all the adults became engrossed in feverish games of mah jong since during Chinese New Year’s, gambling is encouraged and allowed. I preferred to lazily watch and fill myself with New Year’s goodies.

Steve Says:

This was so much fun to get into Chinatown with Nina and learn all about the Chinese New Year customs. The food was amazing and after this experience I want to take a bunch of friends to Chinatown for a similar banquet. The beer was great too.

We shot this episode mainly with a Canon GL/2 with a lav mic which allowed me to get clear sound of Nina talking while showing food at the same time. I used my Nokia N93 cellphone on a tripod to get a shot from the table’s lazy susan while spinning the lazy susan in a circle.

Alternate versions: QuickTime, YouTube.

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Tags: ninasimonds, spicesoflife, food, health, love, lifestyle, newyear, chinese, fish, noodles, dumplings, mushrooms, pork