Lunar New Year 2024

We are excited to be celebrating Lunar New Years this year with a dinner highlighting our amazing head chef, Alwyn's Malay-Chinese background. 

He has put together a delicious menu, based on his childhood memories of dishes his grandmother and mother made, while adding his own twists.

Alwyn moved to Australia 10 years ago this February. His first job was working at Delatite pruning the vines. 

He started working for us full time when we opened our new dining room in June 2021 as the sous chef before becoming head chef in 2022.

Growing up, his family moved around a lot because of his father’s work. Despite this, every year his grandmother expected everyone home for Chinese New Years, there were ‘no excuses’. 

In Malaysia, Lunar New Years lasts 15 days, however when he was growing up everyone was only expected to be home for 3-4 days in the leadup. During this period they would go to the markets, make rice balls and help their grandmother to cook. 

On New Years Eve, everyone would gather and pray to god. Alwyn’s favourite part was the firecrackers at Midnight and his whole family gambling together. 

On New years day they would all have breakfast together. They would then give out the red packets to the children before starting to cook. 

Once all the food was cooked, they would put it all on the table and bless the food. 

His favourite dishes were the abalone, sea cucumber and braised pork. Unfortunately sea cucumber is hard to source here but Alwyn does plan on serving abalone and braised pork.

All the dishes on the menu have meaning and significance. 

Yee Sung is known as the prosperity salad. It is where everyone helps mix the salad together and the higher you can get it, the more prosperity you will have.

Nai Yow Ha is garlic butter prawns. ‘Ha’ is the Hokkien word for prawn. It is meant to signify happiness as it is the phonetic sound of laughing.

Jian Hu is whole fried barramundi. Hu translates to fish which is meant to signify abundance.

Tau Yew Bak or braised pork belly is cooked to bring prosperity because for a time pork was an expensive meat in Malaysia. 

Tang Yuan is a pudding with glutinous rice balls in syrup. Traditionally the whole family would sit down together in the lead up to New Years and make the balls. This is because they signify togetherness. The roundness of tangy uan symbolises completeness and reunion.