There's no celebration like Lunar New Year! I'm super sad not to be in Rochester to celebrate New Years and see my dad do all his ritual prayers and see mom sweep the bad luck out of the house but I'll be damned if I don't celebrate it somehow here on my own! This includes two parades and way too much eating in between stumbling upon lion dances in the street.
This is my first time on my own living in a big city that actually has Chinatown and all of these wonderful things in time for New Years so I was ready to take part in the celebration, starting with lunch! I'm lucky to have new friends in the program that are Chinese and know all the good spots to eat in here in Chicago because there's only so much venturing that I want to do on my own. Of all of their choices we ended up at Saint's Alp Teahouse.
LOCATION: 2157 CHINATOWN PLACE CHICAGO, IL 60616 (b/t Wells St and Princeton Ave)
I'm Cantonese so I'm not super familiar with Taiwanese food and I asked my friends Peiyang and Beiruo what was good and they pointed to several dishes on the menu that they liked or that were a little more traditionally Taiwanese. We ordered flake almond shrimp with mayo (which is super American) but always a fan favorite to all. We each ordered our own rice sets which come with a hot or cold tea with tapioca pearls (I drink mine cold but was the odd one out), a side of broccoli, tofu, and rice with a traditional taiwanese ground meat mix on top, and I ended up ordering the beef skewer meal. Beiruo got the same as me and Peiyang ordered the curry fish meal.
I personally am not a huge fan of tofu but it was only a small side and ended up being a nice palette cleanser between bites of the rice. The Tai meat mix on top of the rice was super good but also quite salty so I enjoyed the tofu and broccoli as breaks. The beef skewer (and bites of Peiyang's curry fish) were both so good and the whole set offered a really good balance overall. This also ended up being a really filling meal for around $10 and I ended up with the leftovers so I can honestly say it was a successful meal!
We finished just in time to see the parade pass by and walked around enough to digest this filling meal for us to stop off and get New Years pastries nearby because we are eating machines for sure. This was a great first New Years on my own; good vibes and full stomachs with new friends