What to eat for New Year’s Eve and the best dishes for any celebration

The lobster and Vietnamese fish from Henry’s Delicacies

The particular lobster at Henry’s Delicacies in Alhambra.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Instances)

My grandma solely orders the lobster at Henry’s for particular events, and solely after she says she received’t. An uncle will request it for a birthday. I’ll ask for the lobster for the vacations. “It’s too costly,” she says with a shake of her head. However 10 minutes later, there’s an order on the desk.

The lobster is lower into bite-sized items, shell on, and shortly fried in a wok. It’s a vivid purple with the faintest sheen of what I think about is butter. The items are reassembled on a platter with the pinnacle at one finish and the tail on the different. Within the center is a heap of lobster underneath a backyard’s price of chopped inexperienced onion and jalapeno. The greens create a kind of sauce, riddled with bits of fried garlic as candy as sweet. You fish out the piece you need, the one that appears like its flesh would be the best to free, then assault together with your palms, pulling and gnawing on the bits of meat hiding within the shells. Your fingers and mouth must be shiny and you ought to be smiling.

The Vietnamese-style fried fish at Henry’s Delicacies.

(Shelby Moore / For The Instances)

Henry’s additionally makes an exemplary model of fried fish with basil, lacquered in a fish sauce glaze speckled with black pepper.

My grandmother is true. Relying on the burden of the lobster, it may be costly. However Henry’s serves free egg waffles for dessert, and my grandmother takes dwelling the leftover inexperienced onion, garlic and jalapenos from the lobster to make use of for one more dish later within the week. And that, she says, is an efficient deal.

Candy and bitter fish and Peking duck at Meizhou Dongpo in Arcadia

Meizhou roast duck is carved tableside at Meizhou Dongpo in Arcadia.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Instances)

The roast duck service at Meizhou Dongpo, on the outskirts of the Westfield Arcadia Mall, is one in every of my favourite table-side displays within the metropolis. An entire duck emerges from the kitchen with glistening pores and skin. A chef rolls out a cart into the eating room and carves the duck subsequent to your desk with a knife so long as his forearm. He deftly removes a slab of crispy pores and skin that runs the size of your complete duck, then proceeds to chop away skinny tiles of meat. An inconceivable quantity of juice drips with the removing of every slice.

The items are organized on two platters with porcelain duck heads, served alongside steamer baskets of gossamer pancakes and ramekins of hoisin sauce, julienned cucumber, scallion and sugar. I like watching how the filling and wrapping methods differ across the desk. However there’s one factor all of us agree on: The pores and skin is the most effective half!

The opposite dish on everybody’s desk is the entire fried candy and bitter fish, often known as sōngshǔ yú or squirrel fish. Although the candy and bitter taste profile has come to signify a complete style of “Americanized” Chinese language meals, the squirrel fish is a dish with centuries-old roots in Jiangsu, an jap coastal province north of Shanghai. The fish, on this case, tilapia, is filleted so that every facet stays hooked up to the tail. It’s scored, masking your complete floor in small, exact cuts, then battered and fried. The flesh puffs up and out in any respect angles and I assume may resemble a bushy squirrel’s story. The fish is doused in a skinny purple sauce that’s extra piquant than candy, with a punchy white vinegar tang, however delicate sufficient to not soften or overpower the crispy fish. It’s a labor-intensive dish that by no means ceases to really feel extravagant and the preparation means you possibly can dig proper in, with none bones.