Jewish and Chinese Cultures Come Together to Create a Memorable Holiday Meal

Chefs Brandon Jew and Evan Bloom take the notion of eating Chinese food at Christmas to a new level.

Last Christmas, San Francisco chefs Brandon Jew, of the Michelin-starred restaurant Mister Jiu’s, and Evan Bloom, of Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen, embarked on a collaboration. For a few short weeks, both Wise Sons and Mamahuhu (Brandon’s casual Chinese American eatery) offered dishes that combined the chefs’ two food cultures, like corned beef and broccoli with everything bagel seasoning and a sweet-and-sour schnitzel sandwich. This is the kind of delicious cultural crossover we’ve come to expect from restaurants in California. (This is, after all, the state that brought us the bulgogi taco and the sushi burrito.) But this particular collaboration has deeper roots.

For millions of Americans, December 25 means Chinese food. Chinese Americans who celebrate Christmas, like Brandon’s family, often serve a meal that includes both traditional Western holiday dishes and traditional Chinese dishes. “There was definitely a mix of things at the table,” Brandon says of Christmas dinners with his extended family. “The main dishes were a standing bone-in rib eye roast — pretty American style, with herbs, garlic, and black pepper — and a whole salmon that my uncle would hot-smoke and serve with crème fraîche and dill. And then the side dishes would be a lot of Chinese vegetables.”

Meanwhile, American Jews, like Evan’s family, often enjoy a different tradition on Christmas Day: eating Chinese food and going to the movies. “For all of my Jewish friends in L.A., Jewish Christmas was the thing,” he says. “My family was always very into dim sum, which always feels celebratory because the restaurants are so grand.” For many, these rituals became a cherished part of the holiday season. Evan says, “It’s like, well, I have to go celebrate Jewish Christmas now. Which is all in good fun.”

I, too, grew up hearing about this way of celebrating the holidays. As the kid of a nominally Episcopalian mom and a Jewish dad, I celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas. And every year, as we planned the Christmas meal, my dad would make the same half-joking suggestion: “Let’s order Chinese!”

And after I married into an observant Jewish family as an adult, my husband shared memories of his own Chinese-for-Christmas traditions. So, after I spent some time living in China researching Chinese foodways, I began to wonder: Could I celebrate Christmas dinner with my family’s traditions while also embracing my husband’s childhood memories?

After trying Brandon and Evan’s holiday menus last winter, I reached out with an idea: What if, together, we created a meal combining all of our traditions, full of rich, varied flavors that would be perfect on any dinner table on Christmas, regardless of your religious or cultural background?

The holiday meal we ended up creating has a bit of each of our stories in it. The menu starts with fried whitefish toasts with a crunchy crust of sesame seeds, a kosher play on the shrimp toasts popular in dim sum parlors. Next, there’s a chicken soup with chestnuts that I learned to make in the mountains of southwestern China, full of the rich, nutty flavors I have always associated with Christmas. For the centerpiece, there’s Brandon’s recipe for traditional roast beef served with a sauce that blends the flavors of caramelized onions and sherry with fermented black beans, savory oyster sauce, and aromatic peanut oil. And for side dishes, we went for stir-fried amaranth and scallion-pancake latkes — a dish similar to both Chinese and Jewish potato pancakes (though the plate-sized potato pancakes I’ve had in China are usually just flavored with chile flakes). To finish, Brandon offers a dessert from Mamahuhu: a black-and-white trifle made from black sesame cake, tahini cream, and fresh bananas that combines the flavors of classic Chinese sweets and banana pudding.

It’s a holiday menu that’s festive, fun, and elegant all at once. As I ate my way through these dishes, I was also struck by how each dish complemented the rest, with warm, rich flavors and bright spices. When I tasted the dessert, with its hints of tahini, it struck me: The flavors that ran through our menu were the flavors of the Silk Road. When the Christmas dishes Westerners love were developed, Asian ingredients were among the most prized ingredients, reserved for special occasions. So the holiday flavors that have been passed down through European families — full of spices like cinnamon and cloves—have been infused with Asian traditions for centuries. Essentially, we’ve always had Chinese for Christmas. We just haven’t always remembered.

Smoked Trout Toasts

:Get the Recipe: Smoked Trout Toasts

Chicken and Chestnut Soup

:Get the Recipe: Chicken and Chestnut Soup

Stir-Fried Greens with Garlic and Chile

:Get the Recipe: Stir-Fried Greens with Garlic and Chile

Scallion Potato Pancakes

:Get the Recipe: Scallion Potato Pancakes

Roast Beef with Shallot and Black Bean Sauce

:Get the Recipe: Roast Beef with Shallot and Black Bean Sauce

Black Sesame Banana Cake Trifle

:Get the Recipe: Black Sesame Banana Cake Trifle