The San Francisco Japantown Foundation has scheduled its annual New Year’s fundraiser for Thursday, January 5, 2017, again offering guests a rare opportunity to experience the traditional Japanese New Year’s cuisine called “osechi ryori” – an elaborate preparation of dishes special significance for the New Year.

The event will take place at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco’s Japantown. Save the date using our Facebook event, or join our email list to receive updates.

Our last event on January 7, 2016, featured Pabu Izakaya, Sushi Ran, Sanraku, Yamasho, Delica, and True Sake as our culinary partners.

This is the San Francisco Japantown Foundation’s primary fundraiser and allows us to continue providing grants to Japantown and Japanese American-related nonprofit organizations.

About Osechi Ryori

Osechi Ryori refers to a number of unique dishes that are prepared once a year to celebrate the New Year.

Many of the items require hours of preparation, and are preserved in ways to make sure that they are delicious to eat throughout the first three days of the year–the traditional way of celebrating the Japanese New Year.

Many of us remember waking up on New Year’s Day to have our bowl of ozoni and then patiently wait as all of the other osechi items were unveiled by our grandparents and great grandparents for us to eat. Being able to eat osechi ryori today, however, is a rarity.

That is one of the reasons the Board of the SF Japantown Foundation decided to initiate and create our annual Osechi Ryori event. It allows us to introduce and re-introduce the special food items that are prepared during the New Year that will bring us good luck, good health and prosperity throughout the year.

With the generous assistance of our restaurant partners, we are able to share authentically prepared osechi dishes that are expressly prepared for today’s event. We sincerely thank our culinary experts for supporting us in carrying on this important culture and tradition, and hope that you will sit back and enjoy each item that has been created.

The individual items and their particular significance is further explained in the insert of this booklet.

We hope that your osechi ryori experience today will bring you back year after year to appreciate and celebrate a very important cultural tradition.