How Chef Eric Chong’s Family Has Inspired His Restaurant’s Lunar New Year Feast
For Eric Chong, Toronto chef and restaurateur, the Lunar New Year holds a special place in his heart. Growing up in Oakville in a Chinese-Canadian family, he found constant inspiration in his grandfather, a self-taught chef, who became the driving force behind many of the family’s culinary traditions.
“My grandfather would make huge feasts with whole steamed fish, stir-fried lobster, stir-fried vermicelli, whole chicken (bak chit gai),” Chong recalls. “Wherever my family was — my aunt lived in L.A., my grandparents from Malaysia would always fly over, and it would always be a family gathering around Lunar New Year.”
“All the ingredients and dishes signify or have symbolic reference to auspicious things in Chinese culture, like wealth, togetherness, nostalgia, good fortune, prosperity — all those things come into play when you’re talking about Lunar New Year dishes.”
Chef Eric Chong
These moments of family and food left a lasting impression on Chong. He fondly remembers his grandfather teaching him how to fold dumplings when he was just six years old, a memory captured in cherished family photos. In fact, it was Chong’s grandfather who inspired him to become a professional chef.
Chong, who you may know as the first-season winner of MasterChef Canada, winning at the young age of 21, has since gone on to open restaurants himself. After receiving an offer from MasterChef judge Alvin Leung, he opened his first restaurant, R&D, in Toronto in 2015. Just last November, Chong opened his second, Akin, which serves a nightly blind 10-course tasting menu (and was fittingly named after Chong’s grandfather).
These days, the holiday looks a little different for Chong. Now a father himself, this will be his son’s very first Lunar New Year. “It’s a little bit different now because everybody’s older and everybody has a bit more rigid schedules. It’s much harder to get together,” he says. “However, we always still make an effort to do at least a family dinner or a family gathering. Growing up, it had to be on the eve, but now that I own two restaurants and like my brother lives in Texas, it’s much harder to celebrate [on a specific day].”



The holiday has also influenced aKin, as the restaurant will be changing its menu for the first time with a new menu inspired by Chong’s family and traditional holiday means. “All the ingredients and dishes signify or have symbolic reference to auspicious things in Chinese culture, like wealth, togetherness, nostalgia, good fortune, prosperity — all those things come into play when you’re talking about Lunar New Year dishes,” he says. “For example, our first course, without giving too much away, is vegetarian. This ties back to the Lunar New Year tradition of starting the celebration with a vegetable-based dish, which is rooted in Buddhist beliefs [of nonviolence.]”
Chong has added creative interpretations of these symbolic dishes to the Akin menu. For example, another course features oysters and fat choy (sea moss), an ingredient typically eaten during the Lunar New Year because it sounds like the Cantonese New Year greeting, “Gung hay fat choi.” Scallops are included to represent togetherness, and whole fish to signify abundance.
As for Chong’s personal Lunar New Year celebration this year, it will remain a family affair — though a busy one, given his packed restaurant schedule. His grandfather is still involved, contributing one or two dishes to the family feast. “He still loves to cook and create,” Chong says, a testament to food’s continued ability to bring his family together.
Akin’s Lunar New Year menu is available from January 30th through February 13th.