“The Togetherness Tray – a snack and dessert tray of mixed food, best embodies the spirit of the Chinese New Year, observed by an estimated 3 billion people worldwide – the Chinese family tradition of getting together for the Spring Festival.
“A big part of celebrating Chinese New Year is visiting relatives and friends, and The Tray of Togetherness is used to welcome visitors and bring people together,” the Phoenix web site states, as pictures of delicious desserts are seen, including coconut, melon, and sesame candies. To all Chinese around the world, Chinese New Year is like Thanksgiving in U.S. culture – it is the time to get home and reunite with family and friends,” said Alex Li, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Las Vegas-based Chubby Cattle restaurants.
Chubby Cattle, a national restaurant franchise “inspired by Mongolian, Tibetan, and Chinese philosophies of medicine and healing,” started in Las Vegas and expanded its successful cuisine to Denver, Dallas and now Philadelphia. “Chinese New Year is celebrated for sixteen days, from the New Year’s Eve to the Lantern Festival. The dinner on New Year’s eve, which we called reunion dinner is extremely important to the Chinese. All family members must come back for the feast,” Li noted. Some of the traditional dishes served at the reunion dinner have “auspicious symbolism,” according to Li, “for example, dumplings is a classic, lucky food for a new year, and is made to look like Chinese silver ingots, which symbolizes wealth,” he added. “Another dish that’s a ‘must have,’ is sweet rice ball, which the pronunciation of it in Chinese is ‘tang yuan’ which sounds like reunion in Chinese, and it symbolizes family being together; and it’s a dish that we eat on the Lantern Festival.” he noted.”
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