The Resy Guide to Celebrating Lunar New Year in New York
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While we’ve just celebrated the start of 2025, in just a few weeks — on Wednesday, Jan. 29 to be exact — we’ll be commemorating the start of the Lunar New Year, specifically the Year of the Snake.
Lunar New Year is one of the Asian community’s most important holidays, a two-week-long celebration known as the Spring Festival. With auspicious foods and superstitions galore, it’s a wonderful time to be around a table with loved ones.
So, consider the two-week span in late January and early February as your designated time to eat your way through Chinatown’s numerous family-owned restaurants, as well as many other incredible spots throughout the city. Lunar New Year is celebrated in Vietnam, Korea, Malaysia, and beyond, too, after all.
Here are some restaurants doing some exciting Lunar New Year happenings this year, as well as classic standbys always worth paying a visit.
And for more inspiration on where to dine in Chinatown all year-round, we’ve got you covered, too: From Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Manhattan Chinatown. And if you need some additional help in Manhattan Chinatown, Welcome to Chinatown has an impressive directory.
Queens
56709 Long Island City
Let Canto- and Mando-pop provide the perfect soundtrack for your Lunar New Year celebration at this Long Island speakeasy listening lounge. Along with your cocktails (we’re partial to The Most Familiar Stranger, made with basil-infused gin or the special Midnight Pretender with milk oolong-infused vodka), you should consider a platter of fried goodness (fish balls, chicken, green beans, and tofu) and radish cakes with XO seafood sauce.
Asian Jewels
Flushing’s go-to for dim sum, Asian Jewels embodies the quintessential dim sum experience: expansive dining room, round tables, lazy susans, and dim sum carts included.
Call (718) 359-8600 to make a reservation.
Dalongyi Hot Pot LIC Long Island City
This is Queens hot pot by way of China, with a special focus on uber-spicy beef tallow broths. The sprawling menu of additions has something for everyone, from scallops to wintermelon. Pro tip: They’re also BYOB.
Little Pepper College Point
Those in the know travel near and far to this Sichuan spot — especially for its verdant scallion fried rice — but really everything on the menu here packs a punch, from the Chongqing-style chicken to the smoked tea duck. For New Year’s, consider getting the home-style fresh fish with minced pork.
Call (718) 939-7788 to make a reservation.
CheLi – Flushing One Fluton Mall
It’s traditional Hu-style Shanghainese cuisine served in a space that transports you to Shanghai just as much as the food does. Enjoy your wine-soaked blue crab, tofu skin rolls, and rice soaked in pu’er tea with sea urchin in the elegant dining room, decked out with paper lanterns and lush greenery.
Red Sorghum 夜宴 Long Island City
It’s a baijiu bar and Hunanese restaurant from the team behind Blue Willow and Ye’s Apothecary where you can enjoy grandma’s rice noodles and braised pork in a space stylized like your very chic aunt’s apartment: Think fringe lamps, brightly patterned wallpaper, and neon galore. Don’t sleep on the red coin tofu or truffled xialongbao.
Taiwanese Gourmet Elmhurst
If you haven’t yet been to this stalwart for Taiwanese food in New York, you owe it to yourself to go. Everyone’s favorite staples here include the crispy pork chop, fly heads (a garlic chive stir fry with fermented black beans), three cup chicken, and the stinky tofu, but might we also suggest the blood rice cake and oyster pancake, too? Whatever you order, you’re sure to be more than satisfied. Just note it’s cash only.
Walk-ins only.
