The Chinese believe that the things done at the start of a new year foreshadow what the rest of the year is going to be. Dressing in your best clothes means being kept in them for the year to come, spending time with family and loved ones means more moments together down the line, and, of course, good food augurs more of it on your table, too. At Lung Hin on the 44^th floor of the Marco Polo Ortigas, one could have just the kind of meal to bring the Lunar New Year in with all the luck they could hope for.

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Work starts early at the Lung Hin kitchen in the lead up to the Lunar new year with their Good Fortune set menu. The geese need to be roused from their overnight brines and readied for a roast that lasts just as long, and the chicken soup starts just as early and boils long and slow all day. Executive chef Ken Leung perhaps describes it best: when customers come in for lunch and ask for the goose, he tells them, “Come back for dinner!”

It’s well worth coming back for, too. Roast goose, much like turkey or lechon, is reserved only for holidays in China. Just like lechon or turkey, there’s also a prized part in goose—as it roasts vertically on its spit, its fat renders and collects downward, and it’s recommended that diners try for parts nearer the goose’s bottom. No matter where one picks apart at the goose however, its meat is still rich and crisp, livened up by a dip in plum sauce, where its citric acidity and sweetness tames the meat’s richness, making this feel like the perfect opener for a new year meal—celebratory, rich, sweet, and indulgent—but without being overly so.

After the goose comes baked slipper lobster, numbingly hot Japanese scallops, and deep-fried squid served with a chop suey with plenty of slivers of liver sausage. But then comes a surprising soup course: Milky-white and thick, the double-boiled chicken soup is a surprising contrast. Plain and unadorned, all one can taste here is slow-cooked chicken stock with a hint of fish and bamboo.

Chef Ken described the process of making this as incredibly water intensive: the chicken is cooked in a double boiler, with one pot inside another, so the soup never comes in contact with direct heat and is instead gently and slowly cooked by the boiling water in the larger pot. What comes out is more tonic than soup, and its inclusion at this part of the meal feels as though that was the point. To pair this with the abalone and oysters served immediately after may feel like a penance for the indulgences one was given earlier in the meal—but the freshness, bitterness, and sea-salty flavors of this course feel like a good splash of cold water to the face, and with the chicken soup so strong one’s spoon stands straight up in it, one’s appetite is sure to be ready for the rest of the meal to come after this.

A highlight of the latter parts of the meal is the poached Garoupa (lapu-lapu) with wild mushrooms. A fish course is always important in Chinese New Year celebrations, as their word for fish—Yú—sounds just like the word for surplus, signifying and portending exactly that for the rest of the year. Served whole, with the head and tail peeping out of the bowl, the lapu-lapu is cooked until it falls off the bone, and the addition of the wild mushrooms, whose taste reminds one of fresh air in a forest—earthy, sweet, and strong—gives the more subtle flavors of the lapu-lapu a more confident base to jump off of.

Chef Ken’s signature dish, which is a salt-baked chicken, is a refreshing surprise that comes after. As its name implies, the chicken is baked in a dome of salt, and, according to Chef Ken, this process traps all the chicken’s moisture inside of its meat, and what comes out is a salty, but incredibly juicy dish of chicken. Its saltiness seems to give the tongue a kind of jump-start, a jolt, cleansing the palate by overwhelming it and preparing it for the meal’s closers—two rice cakes, one savory, and one sweet.

The savory rice cake, better known as machang, is steamed in lotus leaves, and has bits of abalone and salted egg scattered throughout. The smell of the steamed lotus leaves is earthy and floral, and it seems to float about the room and stick to one’s nose as they unwrap the machang. The act of unwrapping the lotus is itself an experience in the meal, reminding one of receiving or opening a gift, the gift being the insides of it—sweet, sticky, salty, savory, reminiscent of a bibingka, but with more of an emphasis on the meaty and savory notes imparted by the abalone and egg.

And to close it all—nian gao, better known here as tikoy. Lung Hin prepares different flavors of tikoy per year, and their selection this year is a dark green pandan, and a maroon date-flavored one. Both are steamed before serving, and the pandan tikoy is rolled in toasted coconut. These rice cakes don’t seek to announce their entrance when one takes a bite—both are subtly and gently flavored, and while there is a hint of sweetness to be found, what comes out is instead a feeling of a soft landing from a high jump, a perfect ending for a meal that, large as it is, doesn’t leave one feeling like a glutton for having it.

Over the meal, Chef Ken explains why nothing in the restaurant had any sharp corners—the tables were all round, the rectangular plates softened at the corners. The tables, he said, were so family members could see each other and talk no matter where they were.

But of the round food, especially the tikoy, he struggles to explain, and scribbles a Chinese character into Google Translate instead – “full circle.” Closing a meal with round food—be it an apple, orange, a piece of buchi, or in the New Year, tikoy, means to close a circle and return from where one began, and to keep repeating this cycle of plenty that this meal gives all through the year. It would be smart to start this cycle well, and if good luck is on your mind, this meal at Lung Hin is well worth it, more than just for what it will return.

For more reservations or more information on the Good Fortune Menu, visit MarcoPoloHotels.com.