Celebrate the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival at Hutong

To celebrate the traditional Chinese Dragon Boat Festival on Monday 2nd June – the fifth day of the fifth lunar month or ‘Double Fifth’ - award-winning restaurant Hutong will be offering a special menu of five dishes from five different regional Chinese culinary traditions. Boat races held during the festival are symbolic of the attempt to rescue the patriotic poet Qu Yuan who drowned on the ‘Double Fifth’ in 278 B.C. Legend has it that Qu Yuan’s fellow villagers threw bamboo leaves filled with cooked rice into the water so that the fish would take the rice rather than the poet, which became the tradition for eating zongzi rice dumplings on this day.

Hutong’s ‘Double Fifth’ menu, priced at £55, will include dishes typical of the regions they represent such as spicy abalone and cuttlefish salad from Dongbei; Classic dim sum platter featuring Rose Champagne shrimp dumplings from Guangdong, Ma La chilli prawns from Sichuan and braised beef in aged vinegar and ginger with vegetable rice from Suzhou. Additionally, traditional sweet Zongzi dumplings of steamed glutinous rice will be served as part of a dessert platter. The platter, which includes golden sesame dumplings filled with apple paste and cinnamon and mango pancake rolls, will also be available separately, priced at £12. Both will be available at lunch and dinner from Tuesday 27th May – until Monday 2nd June inclusive.