Oxford Road food hall Hello Oriental is introducing a new salad to its menu for Chinese New Year, but featuring a somewhat ‘out there’ premium ingredient. The Prosperity Salad is a traditional part of the Lunar New Year feasting season, and has become a viral hit on TikTok.
Over 300 million views of various clips seeing the salad tossed into the air have been logged on the social media site. The higher the salad is tossed, the more ‘prosperity’ is afforded those around the table for the coming year - the year of the rabbit in this case.
And while some of the ingredients - carrot, cucumber, mooli radish, teriyaki salmon - might not seem so unusual, for an extra £5, you can upgrade to another traditional ingredient JELLYFISH. Though it’s generally known for stinging you on holiday, jellyfish is perfectly safe to eat, and considered a delicacy across Asia.
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The texture is chewy, not unlike raw squid, and the flavour delicate but slightly salty. It’s often used, thinly sliced, in Chinese salads.
Hello Oriental co-founder Ricky Yip said: “With or without the jellyfish, the Prosperity Salad is just a fun way to bring in Chinese New Year. We want to bring everyone who comes to Hello Oriental as much good fortune as we possibly can for the coming year.”
The salad can be ordered from this weekend, costs £29.95 and feeds four to six people, with a £5 premium if you want added jellyfish. Other festive dishes include Nian Gao, a Chinese New Year cake and Lo Bak Gao, a traditional radish cake, both of which they will be selling in the supermarket over the festive period.
The restaurant is fast becoming known for its headline-grabbing dishes, another of which is making a comeback for the Chinese New Year celebrations, which start this weekend. It’ll be bringing back its ice cream made from Durian, the divisive fruit with a smell often compared to vomit, but which is loved across Asia.
It’s also introducing White Rabbit candy flavoured ice cream, made from the traditional Chinese milk sweets, as well as an Indomie ice cream, which tastes like packet noodles.
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