Image: AI
Because its name sounds like the word for surplus, in Chinese homes, dumplings are folded to resemble the gold ingots of old, long noodles stand for a long life, and fish is served.
The name was a nod to prosperity, but the intent was balance: eight distinct culinary cultures, from Japan, China and Korea to Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia, each allowed to keep its own character rather than being blended into one generic “Asian” menu. Both traditions put their beliefs on a plate. Each dish is a wish you can eat. We do the same, perhaps less self-consciously. Sweets are the currency of Diwali goodwill. Festive meals pull three generations around one table. A recipe passed down is a family carrying its identity forward. The dishes change from across the country, but the instinct does not: abundance is something to be handed round. After a career spent in hotels and restaurants, I have come to believe the dining table is where these philosophies stop being abstract. People arrive for the food. What stays with them is the company, the discovery and the evening they had. It is also why, when we built a Pan-Asian restaurant at Bellona, we called it Eight. Japanese cooking prizes seasonality and precision. Thai food is a negotiation between sweet, sour, salty and hot. Chinese tables are built for sharing. These cuisines are as alike as they are different.
None of this makes November 8 luckier than any other day.
Cultural storytelling cannot be a lantern hung for the season or a “festive special” printed on a table card. I see this curiosity growing among guests. People want to know where a dish comes from, why an ingredient matters, and what a meal meant to those who first cooked it. Festivals are no exception. One family will gather over the same festive favourites it has eaten for decades. A group of friends might mark the same evening with a cuisine none of them has tried. Neither diminishes Diwali. Both are ways of celebrating the people in the room. That places a responsibility on my industry. It has to show up in the authenticity of the cooking and the respect with which a tradition is handled. Borrowing a culture’s symbols without its substance is shallow and disrespectful. But the coincidence is a useful moment to ask what good fortune actually means. For some, it is a promotion or financial security. For others, it is good health, a happy home, or simply time with the people they love.