Chinese New Year: A royal spread

Margaret Kuo was raised in a culture where culinary arts were regarded on a level with music and literature, with recipes treasured as works of art.

Her father was a senator from Manchuria who welcomed some of China's most prominent people into his home for banquets, especially to celebrate the new year. Even after World War II, when the Communists gained power and her family emigrated to Taiwan, Kuo says, the new year was greeted with elaborate meals at which elders and ancestors were honored.

That's one reason Kuo, who had a successful career as a chemist in the United States, eventually went into the restaurant business here. And it explains why she was intent on bringing the Chinese-style banquet to our shores.

Kuo, now with four restaurants under her watchful eyes, is regarded by many as the doyenne of the royal banquet, traditionally held at the Chinese New Year.

The new year holiday, marking 2009 as the Year of the Ox, began Sunday and extends until Feb. 9. But Kuo's banquets will continue through February and some area restaurants from Chinatown to the Main Line will offer banquet menus well into April.

For Kuo, a banquet means an elaborate meal, artfully prepared, using highly prized ingredients served with propriety as a display of respect for honored guests.

A banquet is a departure from some everyday eating customs and an exaggeration of others. At everyday Chinese meals, rice takes center stage and the dishes are served all at once, but a banquet displays the host's generosity and prosperity, so the food is brought in successive bountiful courses.

Guest and host treat each other with great deference. Who enters the room first is as important as where one sits in proximity to the kitchen door, a humble spot.

And all that, the menu and the manners, are bumped up a notch or two for the New Year's celebration.

"New Year's in China," Kuo says, "is like Christmas here."

The house would be scrubbed from top to bottom, to sweep out the old and make way for the new, and then decorated in red for luck and festooned with symbols of good fortune, happiness and longevity.

The children would get red envelopes filled with cash, and everyone had new suits of clothes.