Lucy Gellman Photo
The lobster and rice cakes.
Peter Guo has a routine at the end of every January: pick out the freshest fish and vegetables from his favorite markets, buy enough pork, lotus root, and yu choi for 600 customers in two days, put on his starched apron and splattered chef’s cap, and get to work.
Guo, with his wife Michelle and daughter Abby, runs Great Wall, a restaurant on Whitney Avenue. His preparations — always frenetic, but especially as late January approaches — come in time for the Lunar New Year, which falls this year on Saturday, Jan. 28.
This year, he said, he has one goal: to watch customers walk in expecting a meal and some good conversation, and leave genuinely believing 2017, despite signs to suggest otherwise, can be a year of auspicious beginnings.
Peter and Michelle.
“Three weeks [of celebration],” he said in an interview for WNHH’s “Kitchen Sync” program. “And a lot of family. We have customers come in and leave happy.”
Based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar, 2017 marks the year of the rooster. Peter Guo said he expected celebrations to last not just through the weekend of the 28th, but through the first two weeks on February, in keeping with Chinese custom. That includes Yale’s annual Lunarfest and lion dance next weekend, which the restaurant has supported for the past several years.
Guo’s optimism for an auspicious new year — which is infectious, and radiates through the low-hanging steam and ginger-scented air of the restaurant — comes from his upbringing in Fu Jian province in southern China, where he and Michelle grew up. As a kid, he would watch his mother and grandmother prepare for Lunar New Year, cleaning the house with an inward sweeping technique for good luck, and then cooking enough to celebrate for three weeks as family members travelled from different cities to be together.
Lotus root and pork.
He recalled the scents that would knock into each other like electrons as aunts, uncles, and cousins arrived and family members handed out hongbao, or red envelopes stuffed with money, to the youngest members of the household.
As they celebrated late into the night, Michelle recalled of her own childhood, a spray of fireworks would light up the velvet blue sky.
Now he, Michelle, and Abby are hoping to share that with New Haveners as a gesture of inclusion and community that can cross cultural boundaries. And it all starts in the kitchen, where still-pinching lobsters, pounds of ginger root, and glistening pork rub up against each other as they await meal prep.
Steamed whole fish with greens and tomato.
From there, the Guos and their small but mighty staff — with whom they make time to sit down during the weekend, when the crowd has quieted — are all hands on deck, working to present a spread specific to the new year. That begins with whole boiled fish with their scales and beady black eyes, root vegetables mixed with meat, summering vegetable soups, and sweet, round edibles, including glutinous rice balls packed with red bean paste and sesame seeds and bright, golden oranges. A tray of candy in red and gold wrapping usually arrives atop a bed of melon seeds, the sign of many healthy children.
Like those seeds, each dish has symbolic meanings, tied to both the foods themselves and how they are pronounced in both Mandarin and Cantonese, explained Abby Guo. Like fish, pronounced yú — which also alludes to prosperity and fortune. It’s common to hear nian nian you yu (年年有鱼/余), she said: May there be a fish/surplus in every year.
Or yu choy, which refers linguistically to both Chinese broccoli and the idea of good fortune. Yùtou — taro root — which stands in for amassing money. Crispy, garlicky and gingery chicken doubles as a sign for financial ascension. And thin, stir-fried lotus root — lián’ǒu — means family connectedness, coming together.
At the end of the meal, Michelle Guo added, round rice balls and small, globe-shaped fruits bring that idea to its zenith, representing a universal coming together. Those foods — and the whole meal — amount to what she is hoping will be a hopeful and prosperous year for not just the restaurant, but also the New Haveners who frequent it.
“We wish New Haven for this new year … become better,” she said. “And the whole world, people become peaceful and the happiest year.”
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