Celebrating the Year of the Ox with Movement and Good Food
Happy Year of the Ox! On the first day of Lunar New Year, we invite you to get moving and fill your body with delicious food. As always, Wu Dang Kung Fu Academy is helping us ring in the new year with a short performance. This year, we also have a cookbook full of Lunar New Year goodies edited by Lauren Clorite and interviews with two of our chefs, Chef Lucas Sin and Chef David Kuzma. We will have a live cooking demo from Chef Coreen Guo on February 22. Register here!
Wu Dang Kung Fu Academy
Instructor Master Jack Guo is passionate about furthering kung fu education in the U.S. In particular, he is dedicated to teaching local Americans how to practice this unique Chinese martial art.
Established in 2007, Wu Dang Kung Fu Academy has been serving the local community for over 13 years. Wu Dang Kung Fu Academy is located at 518 Boston Post Road in Orange, Connecticut. Learn more at http://www.wudangkungfuacademy.com/.
Lunarfest Cookbook
Edited by Lauren Clorite
This year we find ourselves coming together to celebrate the New Year from the comfort of our own homes. In this book, find an amazing selection of community members’ favorite recipes from different parts of China and East Asia that you can make from your own kitchen.
About the Editor
Lauren Clorite is a winter intern at Yale-China, supporting the arts programs. She is currently a junior at Smith College, studying Quantitative Economics and Architecture & Urbanism. At Smith, Lauren is a coxswain on the rowing team and president of the Smith business club. Lauren graduated from North Haven High School and ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, CT with a concentration in visual art.
Chef Lucas Sin
Lucas Sin opened his first restaurant when he was 16, in an abandoned newspaper factory in his hometown of Hong Kong. Despite spending his Yale undergraduate years in the Cognitive Science and English departments, Lucas spent his weekends running restaurants out of his dorm, known as Y Pop-up. He backpacked and cooked his way through Japan, before settling at Kikunoi Honten in Kyoto. He’s also spent time at Modernist Cuisine in Seattle and Michelin-starred kitchens in Hong Kong and New York.
Beyond the bings and noodles at Junzi Kitchen, Lucas also directs the funkier, more indulgent After Hours menu: fried chicken, instant noodles, juicebox cocktails, and the like. His monthly personal project is a no-longer-secret, collaborative tasting menu exploring the narrative of contemporary Chinese cuisine, which we call Chef’s Study.
Chef David Kuzma
David Kuzma earned his degree in Culinary Arts from the Connecticut Culinary Institute. After working two years as the Sous Chef at the Griswold Inn in Essex, Connecticut, he left to study with some of the best chefs in France and graduated at the top in his class from Ecole La Varenne in Paris. With recommendations from several chefs at the prestigious culinary school, he secured a “Stage" position at Restaurant Marius in Paris, where he worked for four months. Upon his return to Connecticut, he took a job with a local caterer which gave him the opportunity to cook in a broad range of styles from Asian to Southern Low Country. Chef Kuzma then took a position as Executive Chef at Bruxelles in New Haven where he cooked for three years and afterward spent ten years as Executive Chef at the exclusive Tumble Brook Country Club in Bloomfield, CT.
David Kuzma joined Yale Dining as a member of the Culinary Resource Center and Executive Chef for Catering in April of 2005. He obtained his Certified Executive Chef from the ACF in April of 2014. In the same year, he was promoted to Assistant Director/ Senior Executive Chef for the Yale School of Management in August of 2014, where he leads a team of chefs that has built a world-class dining experience for our Yale School of Management executive education participants. He continues to study new dishes, new trends, and showcases the culinary talents that we also have here at Yale to provide a memorable experience.