Lunar New Year Catering

Lunar New Year is not one country’s holiday. The same new moon opens Chinese New Year, Vietnamese Tết and Korean Seollal, almost always on one day, and the three sit down to different food. Happy Chinese New Year is a warm thing to say to the wrong colleague. Put Lunar New Year on the invite.

Which kitchen is the first real decision:

• Chinese catering: dumplings, a whole fish, long noodles, nian gao
• Vietnamese catering: bánh chưng, pork braised with eggs, pickled onion cutting the richness
• Korean catering: tteokguk, mandu, and jeon off the griddle

Ask the colleagues who keep it before you pick. AAPI Heritage Month catering is the month-long version, in May.

Nearly every dish is a wish, which makes the symbolism the ordering guide.

• Dumplings. Folded to look like old silver ingots, so they stand for wealth.
• A whole fish. Fish sounds like surplus, and the toast beside it wishes you more than enough. Head and tail stay on.
• Long noodles. Served in one strand and never cut, because a cut noodle cuts the life it wishes for.
• Nian gao. Steamed sticky rice cake, its name a pun on a higher year: a raise, a promotion.
• Bánh chưng at Tết. Sticky rice, mung bean and pork in a square of leaves, boiled overnight and sliced at the table.
• Tteokguk at Seollal. Sliced rice cake in a clear broth. Eating a bowl is how you turn a year older.

Our six lucky foods and the wish behind each one has the wordplay in full.

The center of the holiday is one dinner at home on the eve, with relatives who travelled for it. An office event scheduled against that dinner loses.

Take a weekday around it instead. Celebrations run about fifteen days, out to the Lantern Festival, so either side has room. The day before works, or the week after. Colleagues who observe often take leave in that stretch, so ask before you set a date.

Worth knowing: no US office gets the day off, so the lunch is often the only marking the date gets.

January is usually a soft month for catering. This is the exception inside it. The Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean kitchens that cook the holiday properly are feeding their own communities all week, and some shut for a few days. Book three or four weeks out, earlier than an ordinary January lunch needs, and confirm the day.

A shared spread costs about what a themed lunch costs, $12 to $20 per person. A whole fish moves the number up. Oranges cost almost nothing and belong on the table anyway.

Tell CaterAi which tradition you are ordering for, and the shortlist narrows to kitchens that cook it. The dates after it are on our list of catering holidays and observances.