Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! Tomorrow marks the start of the Year of the Rabbit, which means that celebrants of this Lunar New Year festival all over the world will be gathering with family, feasting on lucky dishes, and adorning their homes with fresh flowers and red decorations.

For those of us who are into astrology and fun stuff like that, people born under the sign of the Rabbit are said to be gracious, calm-natured, amiable, intuitive, compassionate, and appreciative of the aesthetic and beautiful in life (among a myriad of other "attributes"). James Beard (born 1903) was a rabbit, Michael Ruhlman (born 1963) is a rabbit, as is Jamie Oliver (born 1975). Fortunetellers' predictions for this year are tumultuous, it won't put a damper on the festivities.

The annual Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco will take place Saturday 2/19, 5:15–8:00 pm (Market and Second Street to Kearny and Jackson; here's the parade route).

After you've worked up an appetite, lion dancing and such, continue celebrating with some good Chinese Eats. Here are a few standout dishes that will have firecrackers going off in your mouth:

1) Egg Tarts (Golden Gate Bakery)

Egg Tarts (don tat), Golden Gate Bakery

Egg Tarts (don tat) are the quintessential Chinese pastry, found in any self-respectable Chinese bakery or dim sum house. Growing up, whenever it was holiday time, someone would always bring a box of these sweet treats to the hostess (kind of like the bundt cake of our culture, if you will). The pink bakery box (why is it that the red ribbon holding it together always had a gazillion impossible knots to get through before you could dig in?) would sit on the kitchen counter all day along with the other items put out for grazing.

Golden Gate Bakery is a mecca for egg tart lovers. Devout worshippers line up out the door as fresh batches of these egg custard pastries -- with their warm creamy filling, flaky crust, and gentle price -- are churned out.

2) Prawns with Honey Walnuts (Canton Dim Sum & Seafood)

Prawns with Honey Walnuts, Canton Dim Sum & Seafood

Canton Dim Sum & Seafood in SoMa features not only dim sum on its daily menu, but it also offers some traditional banquet dishes as well. Their Prawns with Honey Walnuts is a classic favorite. Succulent shrimp are dusted in cornstarch and fried. They are then coated in a slightly sweet mayonnaise sauce (similar to tartar sauce) and served with candied walnuts sprinkled with sesame seeds. The sweet-savory combo in this dish is great. For a DIY version, I like this Honey Walnut Shrimp recipe from Rasa Malaysia.

3) Marinated Tofu (Asian Pearl Seafood Restaurant)

Marinated Tofu, Asian Pearl Seafood Restaurant

I know, it isn't very often that a tofu dish gets my panties in a bunch. I mean, how exciting can tofu get? That was before I tasted the Marinated Tofu at Asian Pearl Seafood Restaurant. In Cantonese, this dish is called Lo Sui Dao Fu, which literally translated, means "old water tofu." My mom tells me it's because restaurants that make this kind of tofu marinate it in stocks and juices leftover from other dishes. May not sound so appealing, but believe me, whatever is in that old water is working some magic because this dish will turn any tofu-hater into a believer. The silky smooth texture of the tofu is unreal, and seems even more so highlighted by the contrasting crunchiness of the fried casing around it. Light as air, this tofu will have you floating into the new year with a smile on your face.

4) Xiao Long Bao (Shanghai Dumpling King)

Xiao Long Bao Soup Dumplings, Shanghai Dumpling King

Dumplings are a traditional lucky food to ring in the New Year, said to bring good fortune and wealth because of its money purse-like shape. My dumpling of choice? Shanghai Dumpling King's Xiao Long Bao, these labor-intensive steamed soup dumplings of love are soul-satisfying. Once you bite through the thin, smooth wrapping, your mouth is flooded with a shock of hot, rich broth, and savory pork filling. Also utterly addictive are the Shanghai Style Crispy Salt Pancakes. They look nothing like pancakes, and resemble more of a rectangular folded crepe. Cut into pieces, the amazingly crispy, sesame seed-sprinkled, fried exterior gives way to a molten center of cabbage and coconut milk-scented batter.

5) Faux Shark's Fin Soup (Benu)

"Shark's Fin" Soup, Benu

Chef Corey Lee at Benu has taken the celebrated (and controversial) Chinese delicacy, shark's fin soup, and elevated it to mind-blowing proportions with his faux "Shark's Fin" Soup. His creation is a work of art, from the harmonious melding of flavors right down to the custom-made bowl it's served in. The dish is presented with a silky black truffle custard at the bottom of the bowl. Lee doesn't skimp on this luxurious treat either – there is more portioned than you think because the bowl has a special indented groove carved out of the bottom. Placed on top of the custard is a piece of sweet Dungeness crab and strands of faux shark's fin (the texture, by the way, is spot on -– you'd never know it wasn't real shark's fin). Your server then pours into the bowl an intensely flavored broth of Jinhua dry-cured ham. Now that is a way to start of the New Year like an emperor.

Before I was a food blogger, I was a Chowhound. This occurred out of necessity when I first moved to the Bay Area over seven years ago. I had come from Southern California -- a place where I had lived my whole life and where I knew numerous hole-in-the-wall, amazing restaurants. Once I got here, I had bad meal after bad meal. Add the fact that I was homesick and it was June and like 10 degrees Fahrenheit out, and you may begin to understand my despair.

Then there was The Day Of The Two Bad Meals. I'd already had a bad lunch and for dinner my friend Tricia and I decided to eat close to our new Richmond District apartment. I burst into tears as I tried to eat horrible spaghetti, and vowed that I had to find a better way. I had learned that even though there are some really fantastic restaurants in San Francisco, there are also some really vile restaurants out there -- and when you're new it can sometimes be a minefield.

So I found Chowhound. And that was the beginning of delicious meal after delicious meal. Seven years later, I have a love-hate relationship with Chowhound, but I will always be grateful to the members of the boards for showing me the ropes when I was still getting my bearings in this new town.

Early on, we had a lot of "Chowdowns" where members of the community would gather to have a meal at a restaurant. There were certain rules to these events, and one of them had to do with assigning one person to transcribe the menu for the boards. I think because he hated being the transcriber, Derek (now chowfun_derek on the boards) often plied us with egg tarts from Golden Gate Bakery. He'd pick them up from the bakery right before our Chinatown meals and we would eat them still warm. We always let him off the hook for the transcription -- in fact I think that gift of the egg tarts let him get away with a lot.

Derek once told me that he discovered Golden Gate Bakery on his first day in San Francisco in 1970. "I had my suitcases and was walking down Grant, and I spied a long line and decided to just get in it to see what everyone was buying." It was the first bite of food he ate in San Francisco, and he now uses it as a "culinary touchstone" in the city.

Golden Gate Bakery is a very small bakery on Grant Avenue in Chinatown. They have several sweet and savory items, and are famous for their holiday moon cakes, though I have to admit that I only have eyes for their macaroons and their egg tart -- a light, flaky pastry tart that is filled with a warm, sweet, eggy custard. The pastry is really the star of this hand held delight, and when it's filled with egg custard that is slightly firm and not overly sweet you bite into a delicious treat. The macaroons are on the small side, very crunchy on the outside, and very basic with delicious coconut filling. They're my favorite in the city.

Going to Golden Gate Bakery is an experience. I went there on Saturday night and got in line with the throngs. There were several tourists behind me who didn't understand the process. "I think that they're confused," said one tourist, referring to the many employees who were standing around seemingly doing nothing while customers behind the counter just stood and waited. "No, they're waiting for the new batch to come out," I explained, feeling a bit like I was trying to explain what Willy Wonka was doing in his Chocolate Factory. One employee busied herself by preparing a mound of pink boxes. "I think that she probably has enough," grumbled the tourist. I smiled to myself, knowing that all those boxes would be filled very soon. Sure enough, several trays of egg tarts came out at once and the pink pastry boxes were quickly filled.

The line always snakes out the door and when you finally make it inside, a consistent skit ensues. If the item that you want is available, then you're in and out in a couple of minutes. More likely, however, is that your item won't be available. Then you call out your order, and they use a walkie-talkie to talk to the kitchen. There's lots of conversation back and forth before the woman finally tells you how long it will be. I've waited up to 20 minutes for egg tarts to come out of the oven. There's no cooling period -- if you get them right out of the oven, they will be inedibly hot for a few minutes. If you order several, the ladies will give you the egg tarts in a pink box that is vented for the steam.

There was recently a mini-crisis on the Chowhound boards, as Golden Gate Bakery closed inexplicably. When it was finally reported that the pastry maker had died, many speculated and wondered whether we had seen the end of the amazing egg tart. The store was closed for over a month, and the re-opening was delayed several times. "What I really hope they are doing is going back to their homeland ... to find a replacement egg tart chef who can replicate that signature flakey (sic) crust/exterior." said one person on the boards. Happily, the bakery re-opened last week and it's as good as it's always been.

If you're ever in Chinatown and aren't in a hurry, join the longest line on Grant Avenue to find your bliss. If you're going to Chinatown just to visit Golden Gate Bakery, call ahead first. They take a month off each summer, and are sometimes closed on random days.

Golden Gate Bakery
1029 Grant Ave (at Pacific)
415-781-2627

More on Golden Gate Bakery:
The Bunrabs on Golden Gate Bakery
Culinary Muse muses about the egg tarts