‘We are what we eat’: Celebrating Lunar New Year with Petaluma’s Lew family

Lance Lew grew up learning to cook from his father, grandmother and aunt.

A well-known Bay Area celebrity because of his decades of work both on and off the air for NBC Bay Area, Lew is also a lifelong Petaluman, with a few brief stints elsewhere, including his time attending Chico State, where he put on cooking demonstrations and taught cooking classes to earn spending money.

Food has been an integral part of Lance’s life since he was a child, growing up at the family’s Petaluma Grocery Supermarket, which stood at the corner of Petaluma Blvd. N. and Lakeville from 1941 until 1979.

“It takes a village — our grocery store created a safe village setting of co-parenting uncles and aunties,” Lew said. “Chinese New Year was special and allowed us to share all the customs of the holiday. Remember, we were to assimilate and be Americanized but during this special season we decorated our doors with red lucky banners, dressed in culturally appropriate clothing and shared homemade foods.”

Taking this passion for food to another level, Lance has become renowned over the past couple of decades for his 10 course Chinese New Year, Benzinger Winery paired dinners, which regularly sell at charity auctions for north of $10,000.

Having never experienced a Lunar New Year’s celebration ourselves, other than attending the occasional Chinese New Year parade in the city as a kid, and always paying attention to which animal of the Chinese zodiac is represented by the new year (we just moved from the Ox into the year of the Tiger), we were elated to receive an invite to celebrate this year’s traditional transition with the Lews - a family with a passion for food and family, as well as a deep-rooted connection to Petaluma itself.

We had seen the photos over the years and always dreamed of attending a Lance Lew Chinese New Year so were elated to receive an invitation to the reunion dinner, set for the last weekend in January.

“Chinese close out the year with a ‘reunion dinner’ prior to the new lunar year beginning Feb. 2, 2022,” Lance explained. “It is a kind of a recap meeting for the year, prior to moving into the new year, with the good food always helping to soften the mood. This year will be special due to the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics.”

Had Lance not gone into broadcasting, he would have been a perfect teacher because he shares information in a welcoming manner, never talking down to, and always including his audience. And his patience is second to none.

Depending on where you are in the world or from where you draw your cultural foundations, New Year is sometimes called Lunar New Year, the Spring Celebration, and, due to their vast influence over the millennium throughout Asia, often as Chinese New Year. However, what all these New Year’s celebrations have in common is that they are based on a calendar that follows the lunar cycles, as opposed to the western world’s Gregorian calendar, where the phases of the moon never line up with the same days of the month.

“The reunion dinner is sometimes referred to as an ‘au revoir’ dinner, incorporating foods that are similar to our new year menu - something from the sky, land and sea,” he said. “The greatest importance of the dinner is the gathering of family and friends to ‘close out’ the year and to start with a clean slate for the new year.”

At this recent dining event, we would learn much more.

Dining at the Lews’ is like eating a story, only this one not only tasted heavenly, but was meant to impress the heavens, as well as pay respect to our ancestors. I say “our” because even though we were new to this cultural experience, the Lews invite guests to assimilate into their culture, at least for the night. Knowing very little about the Chinese culture, some might have been put off balance with such an inundation of cultural information but Lance presents it all in such a inviting manner. It is all about celebrating, sharing and connecting. This would have been an incredible dinner even had we been eating rice and vegetables with all the stories elevating the flavors. But Lance makes it six, and even eight times better.

Most of the dishes revolve around word play and are chosen based on homonyms of the Chinese words for each dish, Lance said.

Our meal started off with a fish dish, which holds significance because the word for fish in Chinese is a homonym for plentiful supply.

“We are what we eat”, says Lance. “We are hoping for plentiful supplies in the new year.”

This particular dish was a simply seared scallop served on a grilled orange. Having never been served a grilled orange with dinner, we chuckled when Lance broke the confusion - “you can eat the orange, if you want.”

The next dish was unlike anything we had tasted before, thanks to Lance’s creativity. The Cornish game hen breast is cooked skin side down on high heat and turned only for a few seconds at the end. It gives the non-crispy side a poached texture, which is how the traditional celebratory chicken dish would be prepared. Although the Chinese usually do not eat rice at celebratory meals, because it fills you up too quickly and is not considered fancy enough for a feast, alongside the perfectly cooked crispy game hen breast was Lance’s grandmother’s recipe for a sweet rice cake.

“The stickiness represents togetherness,” Lance said. “And here, the homonym for chicken, which is what this dish is standing in for, is ‘guy’ – ho soi guy – which means to have a good long life.”

Served along with the game hen and sticky rice cake was the most incredible dipping sauce, made of garlic, ginger, salt, green onions and hot oil.

Lance told us that the traditional veggie dish, Buddha’s Delight, does not normally do well with westerners, who prefer protein, so he cooks his in duck fat. The homonym here relates to things that are vibrant and alive. The gingko nut represents gold or silver ingots, the Chinese broccoli is fresh and alive, the mushrooms are for longevity, the carrots are shaped like Chinese gold and the baby corn symbolizes abundance.

Oysters represent everything good, and its homonym means to grow well, so Lance infused pork, Chinese sausage and shitake mushroom with dried oysters, all to be wrapped and eaten in fresh lettuce. A minced pork or squab dish is usually part of this celebration in order to wish for everything to be prosperous and good in the new year.

As a certified BBQ judge, I have tasted a lot of great ribs in my day, but have never had anything like Lance’s braised baby back ribs, made with red and white vinegar fermented bean curd and finished with dried fig and port sauce. It looks as if it is going to be sweet, but has a perfect balance of savory too. If entered in an open rib competition, this would take the prize.

The final main dish of the meal was confit of Liberty Duck, with homemade steam bao. Duck is usually reserved for special occasions in Chinese cuisine and this dinner certain fit the bill. The legs and thighs are salted with 5 spice on the non-skin side and then cooked in a hot pan. This dish also brings ‘something from the sky’ to the table, to help balance out the land and water dishes.

For dessert we enjoyed Nein Gao, a brown slab sugar confection that is dense and flavorful, especially when sliced and fried on a skillet. The homonym here relates to the ‘year rising – achievement and promotion.’ Traditionally, two are made – one for the kitchen god, to make sure you did everything right and is slightly sweetened so as to help sweeten the report to the Jade emperor, while the other is for us mortals to enjoy.

As a special treat, Roberta presented a pound cake with whole pears baked into it. The pears are a play on “pairs,” hoping for more prosperity for the family in the coming year.

Already an incredibly special dinner, Lance added to the experience by inviting life-long family friend Jennifer Reichardt and her husband winemaker Mike Dmytrenko (Littoria Wines). Both are not only great company, but are extremely knowledgeable about wine, especially European varietals, both having spent time studying and tasting throughout the continent.

Jennifer highlights these more affordable varietals in her Raft Wines, which Jennifer and Mike expertly paired with Lance’s dinner.

We started with the couple’s collaboration wine – Et Al. Picpoul Blanc. Unlike the rest of Raft’s wines, with simple black and white labels, this one sports sea shells, has a clean and refreshing acidity and started the dinner off perfectly, paired with Seared Scallops on caramelized oranges. If you are looking for a wine to pair with seafood, this one is hard to beat, especially at less than $30.

Jennifer also runs Liberty Ducks, which featured prominently throughout Lance’s dinner. Lance’s family has been buying ducks and duck eggs from the Reichardt Duck family for decades, and Lance grew up as friends and classmates with Jim Reichardt, who went on to spin off his Liberty Ducks brand in the 1990s.