Hawke’s Brewing is celebrating Lunar New Year with the release of a special beer, Hawke’s Lucky Lager, to be enjoyed through a series of events at The Bob Hawke Beer & Leisure Centre with traditional lion dance entertainment and Cantonese food.
Pouring in the public bar throughout Lunar New Year, Hawke’s Lucky Lager is a crisp, dry rice lager that uses cooked rice from the Lucky Prawn kitchen, resulting in light bitterness and a zesty finish.
In partnership with the Lucky Prawn restaurant, which sits inside The Bob Hawke Beer & Leisure Centre at the brewery site in Marrickville, the venue will be dishing up a limited Lunar New Year banquet and yum cha over four days.
From 29 January to 1 February, the Lunar New Year banquet menu will feature dishes such as prawn toast, prawn wontons, blue swimmer crab noodles, steamed murray cod and snake beans. Alternatively, patrons can enjoy the yum cha brunch on 2 February, with favourites like sweet and sour pork, special fried rice and sang choi bao.
Ensuring an authentic Lunar New Year experience, the Jin Wu Koon Lion Dancers will perform at two key seatings during the festive period.
Director of Lucky Prawn, Nic Wong, says the events were inspired by his own family traditions.
“I’ve spent countless nights in Chinatown, whether with family, friends, or work colleagues, soaking in the buzz of the area. The late-night visits to Golden Century or Superbowl were an exciting tradition for me as a kid, and the sight of lion dancers and the sound of firecrackers would light up the streets. My brother and I would scramble to find the ones that hadn’t gone off yet – seems dangerous now, but it felt magical back then.
“Sadly, Chinatown has changed, with beloved spots like Golden Century and Marigold closing down, places where I grew up eating. But we still gather as a family, usually at my uncle’s place. With eight siblings in my father’s generation, our family is large, and Lunar New Year is when we come together to make offerings to our ancestors, share a feast, and fold dumplings as a group – a tradition I hold dear. We always reserve a whole pig from KW BBQ in Homebush West, and of course, there are the red envelopes filled with cash for the kids.”
Speaking of the menu, he added: “Lunar New Year always brings to mind seafood – lots of it. Whole crabs, live prawns, steamed oysters, whole fish, clams. Each food item has its own symbolic meaning, and we make sure to incorporate as much of it as possible. Whole fish for prosperity, dumplings for wealth, noodles for longevity and happiness, and fresh fruit for fullness and wealth. These traditions, the food, the family, the joy – it’s what Lunar New Year is all about to me.”
As one of the most widely celebrated holidays around the world, the series of events is an opportunity to create culturally inclusive moments for the community, hosted at Hawke’s Brewing’s own homage to Australia’s Chinese restaurants of the 1980s.
You can find out more about the event or book a table here.
