This Lunar New Year Chinese cooking class is a festive, three-hour form of cooking class team building in San Francisco: a chef teaches your group to make Peking duck, dumplings and more, then everyone sits down to a family-style feast, a fitting start to the Bay Area new year.
The standard rate is $170 per guest for groups of 1 to 30. Steamed jasmine rice, nonalcoholic beverages and nian gao (Chinese New Year rice cake) are included, all materials are provided, and guests may bring beer or wine to celebrate with dinner.
What's Included
- Three hours of hands-on cooking with an experienced chef
- Four family-style dishes made by the group
- Steamed jasmine rice and nonalcoholic beverages
- Dessert: nian gao, the traditional
This Lunar New Year Chinese cooking class is a festive, three-hour form of cooking class team building in San Francisco: a chef teaches your group to make Peking duck, dumplings and more, then everyone sits down to a family-style feast, a fitting start to the Bay Area new year.
The standard rate is $170 per guest for groups of 1 to 30. Steamed jasmine rice, nonalcoholic beverages and nian gao (Chinese New Year rice cake) are included, all materials are provided, and guests may bring beer or wine to celebrate with dinner.
What's Included
- Three hours of hands-on cooking with an experienced chef
- Four family-style dishes made by the group
- Steamed jasmine rice and nonalcoholic beverages
- Dessert: nian gao, the traditional Chinese New Year rice cake
- All ingredients, tools and equipment
The New Year Menu
- Steamed money bag dumplings
- Chinese seafood bird basket
- Peking duck with Mandarin pancakes
- Shanghai fried noodles
The class celebrates the Year of the Goat with a feast of traditional dishes. The chef shows how to prepare Peking duck at home, complete with Mandarin pancakes, how to fold delicate steamed dumplings shaped like money bags, how to stir-fry noodles over high heat, and how to build a truly impressive bird's nest basket filled with seafood. Along the way, guests learn which ingredients to keep in the pantry to cook these dishes again in their own kitchen. Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Why It Works for Teams
A banquet menu has many moving parts, which is what makes it such good corporate team cooking. One group folds dumplings while another rolls pancakes and a third handles the wok, then everyone comes together around one shared table. That rhythm of splitting up and regrouping is the heart of team bonding cooking: people who rarely collaborate end up depending on each other for dinner.
For planners hunting for unique team building ideas early in the year, a Lunar New Year feast is a welcome change from the usual holiday party season, and it gives teams a meaningful way to mark the new year together.
A Taste of Tradition
Many of these dishes carry symbolism for the new year. Money bag dumplings are shaped to suggest prosperity, noodles are a classic part of a celebratory table, and nian gao, the sticky rice cake served for dessert, is a familiar sweet across the holiday. Learning the stories behind the food gives the evening a sense of occasion that a standard dinner out cannot match.
Who It Suits
The class is beginner friendly. It works for date nights, group outings, cultural celebrations and anyone looking for distinctive cooking classes in San Francisco. Kids from 12 years old can take part, and adult accompaniment is not required.
About the Kitchen
The class runs in a bright home kitchen and event space in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco, with windows overlooking the Bay. The same team hosts culinary team building and private events for companies, along with public cooking classes, and works at satellite locations around the Bay Area. Their whole approach is simple: move people out of their everyday roles and into the camaraderie of the kitchen, where a shared goal of making a nourishing meal turns into an evening people remember.
Beyond scheduled classes, the same kitchen runs private cooking events for groups as small as 10 and as large as 300, and the chefs are happy to accommodate most dietary needs and food allergies when told in advance. Custom menus are treated as a welcome creative challenge, so groups with a specific theme in mind can ask about adapting a menu for their event.
Planning Tips
- Share any dietary needs or allergies with your headcount so the chef can plan ahead
- Wear comfortable, closed shoes and clothes you do not mind getting a little flour on
- Plan for the full session, since the shared meal or tasting comes at the end
- Bring a cooler bag or tote if you will be carrying food home
Good to Know
- Beginner friendly, with no cooking experience required
- Bring your own beer or wine to celebrate with dinner
- An optional logo apron can be added when booking for $25
- Groups of 1 to 30 guests at $170 per guest
Plan Your 2027 Lunar New Year Event
Share your preferred date and headcount to check availability. With per-guest pricing, a four-dish feast and every ingredient supplied, it is a generous way to welcome the new year with your team or friends.
