This ranks our 10 favorite savory snacks and decadent desserts at the 2025 Lunar New Year Festival at Disney California Adventure. This is Disneyland Resort’s winter special event, honoring honoring Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultures with a mixture of authentic entertainment and fun foods.
The 2025 Lunar New Year event rings in the Year of the Snake, and runs through February 16, 2025. In addition to all of the cultural components covered in our Guide to Lunar New Year at Disney California Adventure, there are a variety of marketplaces in Paradise Gardens Park and beyond, including:
- Bamboo Blessings
- Longevity Noodle Co.
- Lucky 8 Lantern
- Prosperity Bao & Buns
- Red Dragon Spice Traders
- Wrapped with Love
In addition to these dedicated food booths, the menus throughout DCA (and some beyond in Downtown Disney and the Hotels of Disneyland Resort) have added dishes, desserts, and drinks for Lunar New Year. It’s definitely a big food event, with something for everyone.
We’ve started to taste our way around the 2025 DCA Lunar New Year Festival, trying many of the new and returning dishes and desserts but not all of them. However, with this being the shortest seasonal event of the year, we may not get a chance to graze our way through the entire event until early February…by which time it’ll be half over. So consider this a work in progress ‘best of’ Lunar New Year foods for now.
The Sip & Savor Pass is back for the 2025 Disney California Adventure Lunar New Year Festival, offering a commemorative credential, lanyard and tabs redeemable for food and nonalcoholic beverages at the marketplace booths.
This scannable pass offers six digital coupons that can be redeemed for select bites and non-alcoholic beverages from the Lunar New Year Marketplaces and participating dining locations in Disney California Adventure. You can even use it throughout the entirety of this year’s festival.
The passes this year are available in three new, limited-edition, collectible designs that pay homage to either Chinese, Vietnamese or Korean cultures—and feature some of your favorite Disney characters in culturally-inspired outfits. When you purchase your pass at locations including Elias & Co., Julius Katz & Sons, and Seaside Souvenirs, let a cast member know which limited design you want.
We recommend buying the Sip & Savor Pass if you’re going to graze around the 6 food booths. It’s a good value so long as you buy only the most expensive (savory) items at each food booth. Your per item breakeven cost is under $8, which is a lower baseline than several of the savory items on our recommended lists below. Ideally, you’d use the Sip & Savor Pass for savory items and pay for desserts out of pocket.
Another piece of advice–at least on busier days–is ordering as much as possible at one booth. A lot of people don’t realize this is possible, but you can order from any of the menus at any of the booths, meaning that you just save your receipt (DO NOT LOSE IT!) and go to the return line rather than waiting in line to order all over again. We try to order from ~3 booths at a time, which is about the sweet spot. (We’ve done more before, but regretted it. Turns out our eyes were bigger than our stomachs.)
Before we dig into the dishes, I want to start with a recurrent complaint: the food booths at Lunar New Year are not as ambitious as we’d like, and play it far too safe.
This has been an ongoing issue with all three DCA festivals over the last couple of years, but it’s gotten really bad in the last year. We didn’t get a chance to do a best & worst list during the DCA Festival of the Holidays, but we ended up being pleasantly surprised by the cuisine quality. However, it was–as with the other events–very heavy.
An overabundance of crowd-pleasing comfort food dishes on the savory side, and overly-sugary and artificial desserts has been the trend for these events. Everything has been too heavy, and lacking in spiciness and ambition. This makes sense to an extent–there’s plenty of Asian cuisine that’s indulgent or decadent, and a lot of it is fairly mild.
However, it’s nevertheless disappointing, especially as Disneyland Resort has generally gotten more ambitious and inventive over the last couple of years, and are doing anything but playing it safe. Look no further than San Fransokyo Square, which has a variety of interesting fusion dishes, many of which appeal to adventurous eaters. That section of DCA is incredibly popular, which is unsurprising given the guest demographics of Disneyland Resort.
Disneyland going in this safer direction with the food booths at DCA festivals is also surprising given that EPCOT’s festivals have done a better job at offering a range of interesting and ambitious cuisine, with both lighter and heavier dishes. Given all of this, it’s both perplexing and disappointing that the menus at Lunar New Year play things so safe. If anything, we would’ve thought that the temporary food booths would’ve been the perfect opportunity to push the culinary envelope!
In the interest of full disclosure, we were invited by Disneyland to attend Lunar New Year and given two Sip & Savor Passes. However, we also have Magic Key Annual Passes and would’ve attended regardless. We’ve also spent hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on food at Lunar New Year over the years. That trend will continue this year when we return to eat more (and pay for it out of pocket).
With all that out of the way, let’s dig into our running list of the best dishes at the 2025 DCA Lunar New Year Festival…
One of my favorite items is from the Lucky 8 Lantern Marketplace–the Quesabirria Eggroll.
The eggroll is incredible–flavored similarly to the beloved tacos from Cocina Cucamonga–but the price is $9.50. It’s very hard for me to say a single eggroll, no matter how delicious, is worth almost ten bucks. Definitely a great use of a Sip & Savor credit, though.
For what it’s worth, the Quesabirria Eggroll is a good example of fusion cuisine and not what I’m complaining about above with an overabundance of comfort food. This is a Disney event, so we’re not expecting perfect cultural authenticity. Not only that, but it’s an event in Southern California, a place known for fusion foods. This is exactly what we’d expect from Lunar New Year dishes, but it should be the biggest “compromise” cuisine.
My other favorite dish at the 2025 Lunar New Year is at Wrapped with Love, which serves the Phở Dip with rice noodles, sliced beef, shaved jalapeños, pickled onions, and Phở broth.
Again, a great example of the fusion cuisine for which SoCal is famous. The sliced beef is tender and delicious, and the pho dip along with the toppings made for a delicious and satisfying dish.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Fried Lemongrass Chicken Dumpling with plum sauce are awful. The dumplings we got were cold and the edges of the wrap were rock-hard. We thought this might’ve been bad luck on our part, but we spoke with others who had the same problem. Even if the preparation were fine, this is overpriced at $9. I can barely use an oven, and the stuff I make from the freezer turns out better than this.
Also at Wrapped with Love is the Mandarin Orange Cream Puff filled with citrus cream and Mandarin compote.
I was surprised at just how good this dessert is. The pastry is perfect, with a light crunch on the outside giving way to a softer interior and creamy citrus and Mandarin compote. It’s sweet and indulgent, but unlike a lot of the drinks at Lunar New Year, it doesn’t go too far. It’s more subtle and the end result is fantastic.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fan-favorite Strawberry Milk Tea Macaron at Bamboo Blessings.
Believe the hype about this. Disneyland does macaroons remarkably well, and this one is right up there (for me, it’s just behind the version at Food & Wine). The strawberry buttercream with a milk tea center is fantastic–again having a more subtle quality that doesn’t overpower. It also doesn’t taste overly artificial. It’s just perfect.
You can’t go wrong with the bowls at Longevity Noodle Co.
Of the two, the Shrimp Lo Mein Noodles are the more ambitious and interesting, whereas the Garlic Noodles are pretty plain–exactly what you’d expect based on the name and description. They’re good, though!
Annual Passholders and locals love the Sip & Savor Pass, but honestly, you consider skipping the Sip & Savor Pass for the 2025 Lunar New Year Festival. Not because the booths are “bad” (although I think the menus are slightly weak especially given the high standards set by San Fransokyo Square), but because lines can be long and there are so many great food options around DCA right now.
This is our favorite menu of the year at Paradise Garden Grill, and the 2025 Lunar New Year offerings there do not disappoint. The defining dish here, as always, is the whole fish that is (allegedly) for 2. I still cannot believe this is served at a counter service restaurant, let alone prepared so expertly. It’s the must-order menu item.
If that’s a bit too intimidating, the Pork Banh Mi Sandwich (grilled pork belly with pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, and jalapeño with spicy mayo) is unrivaled. It’s not actually all that spicy, making it an incredible, crowd-pleasing dish. This is my go-to dish once we finish our reviews and start eating at Lunar New Year “for fun” each year.
You can use the Sip & Savor Pass for a ‘tasting size’ portion (pictured above), but just do yourself a favor and order the full-sized thing. The Sip & Savor portion size is less than half the size of the full sandwich, and the regular version is only $15. That makes the smaller sandwich a poor use of the credits. Speaking of which, I’m also really looking forward to trying the Bánh Mì Hot Dog at Award Wieners (talk about fusion cuisine!).
At Paradise Garden Grill, we also love the Spicy Shrimp Lo Mein (Lo Mein Noodles tossed with Shrimp, Arbol Chiles, Mushrooms, Cabbage, Corn and Bell Pepper) and Korean-style BBQ Chicken (Steamed Rice, Kimchi and Pickled Cucumber). Both offer hearty and filling portions with a great mix of flavors and ingredients. In other words, we highly recommend everything on the menu that we’ve ordered thus far.
Then there’s the new for 2025 dessert–the Strawberries and Cream Roulade covered in Toasted Almond Slices. Again, subtle is the name of the game here, as this delicious dessert is light and wonderful, and doesn’t overdo it with the sugar or even the cream. It won’t blow your mind, but it’s really good for a simple and straightforward dessert. (Speaking of almond, we haven’t gotten to the Almond Cookie Bread Pudding at Aunt Cass Cafe yet, but their bread pudding is always a winner.) The Sip & Savor Pass is also valid on these desserts, but they’re a poor use of credits.
There’s still a lot of other food we want to try at Lunar New Year. In particular, the festival foods served at Lamplight Lounge, Sonoma Terrace, Studio Catering Co, and a couple of spots in both the Grand Californian and (to my surprise) Pixar Place Hotel.
Wrapping things up (for now), Lunar New Year is once again one of our favorite seasonal events of the year at Disney California Adventure. Coming down from the holiday highs of Halloween and Christmas, it’s not on par with those celebrations. But it’s also much bigger than the medium-tier events in the first half of the year (Lunar New Year is better than DCA Food & Wine, for example), and is a great way to spend winter at Disneyland Resort.
Lunar New Year is truly the perfect marriage of cultural authenticity and Disney. That’s true of the event as a whole–I just wish it were the case with the food booth menus. Regardless, it’s great to see the community involvement and spend time in Paradise Garden Park enjoying the live musicians and other offerings back there.
Lunar New Year has a fantastic vibe as a result–an atmosphere you’ll only find during this and the DCA Festival of the Holidays. Given the diversity of Southern California, more mini-events like this would be a huge hit with guests, and Disneyland Resort clearly has the ability to pull off this type of stuff. Lunar New Year is popular for good reason–more twists on this formula would be fantastic!
Planning a Southern California vacation? For park admission deals, read Tips for Saving Money on Disneyland Tickets. Learn about on-site and off-site hotels in our Anaheim Hotel Reviews & Rankings. For where to eat, check out our Disneyland Restaurant Reviews. For unique ideas of things that’ll improve your trip, check out What to Pack for Disney. For comprehensive advice, consult our Disneyland Vacation Planning Guide. Finally, for guides beyond Disney, check out our Southern California Itineraries for day trips to Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, and tons of other places!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Excited to experience the 2025 Lunar New Year festivities at DCA? Anything at the food booths look good to you? Does Lunar New Year Celebration look like a perfect marriage of cultural authenticity and Disney, or does it look uninteresting to you? If you have been, what do you think of DCA’s Lunar New Year Festival? Any tips to add? Hearing from you is half the fun, so if you have additional thoughts or questions, please share them in the comments!
