The Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year, is an annual celebration for many Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwan, Korean, Hmong, and other Asian communities in Minneapolis. In 2024, the Year of the Dragon begins on Saturday, February 10 and is celebrated for the following two weeks. These fifteen days offer festive opportunities to connect with family and friends, give gifts, enjoy parades featuring traditional music and dance, and savor some Lunar New Year foods said to bring good luck and prosperity for the coming seasons.

Minneapolis is home to a diverse array of Asian communities, each with its unique cultural practices and traditions related to the Lunar New Year, so restaurant specials and celebratory events abound. Here’s where you can celebrate your heritage, or learn about and appreciate the traditions of your neighbors, with something delicious.

Peking Duck at Shuang Cheng Restaurant

Located in Dinkytown, Shuang Cheng Restaurant offers Cantonese specialties including Peking duck, a celebratory part of a Chinese New Year feast. Here, it’s served over the traditional three courses—first with crispy skin and delicate pancakes, followed by roasted duck bone and mustard green soup, and finished with stir fried duck and vegetables. (During Chinese New Year, poultry is often served complete with the head and feet intact to represent prosperity.)

Steamed Whole Fish at Tea House Chinese Restaurant

For more regional Chinese cuisine, head to Tea House Chinese Restaurant near the University of Minnesota—it’s a great bet for spicy Sichuan and Anhui specialties, including the steamed whole fish that is commonly served for Chinese New Year to bring in a year of abundance (in a common phrase in Cantonese, the last character in the phrase ‘plentiful’ sounds a lot like the character for fish, and in Mandarin, the word for fish sounds like the phrase for abundance or having a surplus).

Joyful Family Reunion Feast at Legendary Spice

Feed the whole family with this Chinese New Year special for 4 to 6 diners at Legendary Spice in Dinkytown. They’ll fill the table with spicy pickled chicken feet and red oil pig ears (for prosperity and fortune), dry pot prawns to represent treasure, their signature hot and sour beef, Thousand-Layer Pork, fermented black bean fish slices, homemade wontons, and much, much more for $188.

Dim Sum at Yangtze Restaurant

At St. Louis Park’s Yangtze Restaurant, known for serving up Hunan, Sichuan, Mandarin, and Cantonese specialties, you can enjoy dim sum, Saturdays and Sundays from 10-2. The weekend menu features traditional Chinese New Year dishes like spring rolls, niángāo (sweet rice cakes), glutinous rice dumplings, and lo bak go—fried turnip cakes often served at Lunar New Year celebrations because the name for the main ingredient, choi tau (white radish) sounds like “Good Luck” in Chinese.

Dan Dan Noodles and Dumplings at JUN Szechuan Kitchen & Bar

This North Loop restaurant specializes in Szechuan cuisine and boasts a menu of handmade dumplings, noodles, and buns. From Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) and sticky rice dumplings filled with pork and shrimp to szechuan pork dumplings and spicy dan dan noodles, the menu is full of dishes popular during Chinese New Year. To ring in the Lunar New Year, noodles are traditionally made as long as possible to symbolize a long life ahead.

Bánh tét at Quang and Vietnamese Hot Pot at Jasmine 26

The season of Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration, known as Tết, offers a chance to sample bánh tét, cylindrical sticky rice cakes stuffed with mung beans and marinated pork belly and wrapped in banana leaves. Every year, Minneapolis Vietnamese favorite Quang offers made-to-order bánh tét, available by calling the Eat Street restaurant. Since it calls for gathering around the table with family and friends over a shared pot of broth, Vietnamese Hot Pot is a common way to celebrate Tết as well. Head to East Street’s Jasmine 26 for a totally customizable hot pot experience—where you can choose your own adventure with a variety of broths, meats, seafood, vegetables, and fresh noodles.

Seollal—Korean New Year—Specials at Kim’s and Kimchi Tofu House

Korean New Year, known as Seollal, is a great time to try Korean specials like bulgogi (Korean BBQ beef), tteokguk (rice cake soup), kimchi dumplings, and nokdujeon (Mung bean pancakes). At Kim’s (James Beard Award-winning chef Ann Kim’s Korean-American restaurant in Uptown) you’ll find a modern array of dishes from the chef’s Korean-American childhood, mashups of her mother’s North Korean and her father’s South Korean upbringings. Kimchi Tofu House, a small but mighty eatery just off the UMN main campus, is a great spot for silken tofu stew, bulgogi, Korean ramen, bibimbap, and tteokbokki (rice cake stew).

Lunar New Year Decorations and Ingredients at United Noodles

This 15,000 square foot pan-Asian supermarket in Minneapolis’s Seward neighborhood boasts what is arguably the largest selection of Lunar New Year and Year of the Dragon decorations in the Twin Cities. There you’ll find hanging lanterns, red envelopes, ingredients to make your own Lunar New Year feast, and snacks from many Asian countries and cuisines.