A former Michelin-starred chef is trading white tablecloths for lazy Susans this week, joining forces with Oakland Chinatown's last traditional Chinese banquet hall for a single night of 10-course Mid-Autumn Moon Festival dining. Chef Gizela Ho, who left her chef de cuisine post at San Francisco's Rich Table in 2025, has partnered with Peony Seafood Restaurant for a dinner on Friday, September 18, blending roughly half traditional Cantonese dishes with half fusion creations built around the coming lunar holiday.
The collaboration, first reported by The Oaklandside, pairs Ho with Peony's all-male kitchen staff, including head chef Liang Guo Run, who previously worked in a five-star international hotel kitchen in China. Ho, who speaks fluent Cantonese, has cooked at Peony for eight evenings while developing the one-time menu with the restaurant's team, according to the same report. Liang told the outlet that the collaboration combines China's culinary traditions with modern Western food culture.
Ho's path to this kitchen wound through fine dining rather than banquet halls. She pivoted to culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa after starting out in biochemistry at UC Davis, then spent eight years at Rich Table before stepping away to launch her own concept, Good Morning 96 in S.F., a tribute to her grandfather and a classic Hong Kong kitchen towel brand, according to SFist. Per the Oaklandside report, Ho has also popped up at Nisei and Angler SF, and she told the outlet that working in Peony's kitchen was less intimidating than she expected, even though traditional Chinese restaurant kitchens differ substantially from the fine-dining spaces she came from.
A Menu Split Between Tradition and Invention
The dinner unfolds family-style around round tables set with a lazy Susan, the format that has long defined Cantonese banquet dining, per the Oaklandside's reporting. Diners will work through dishes like roasted suckling pig with osetra caviar, braised abalone, sea cucumber and fish maw served in little gem lettuce cups, and a wintermelon gourd soup with shiitake, scallop and shrimp. Fusion plates on the menu include a shrimp and scallop stuffed chicken wing with fish sauce caramel, a salt and pepper fish taco with pickled melon and cantaloupe Mae Ploy sauce, and longevity noodles topped with Oregon Dungeness crab, creme fraiche and smoked trout roe.
Dessert closes the meal with a Swiss roll olive oil cake with fresh figs, plus a mooncake given to every attendee. The timing lines up with the Mid-Autumn Festival itself, which falls on September 25 this year and ranks as the second most important holiday in Chinese culture after Lunar New Year, centered on autumn harvest and family reunions, as Berkeleyside notes.
Cocktails and a Communal Table Format
Tickets run $151 per person including tax and tip, per the Oaklandside's reporting, with an optional $65 cocktail pairing add-on from Viridian Bar featuring four drinks: Winter Gourd, Wasabi Mami, Sea + Smoke, and Tomato Beef. Viridian co-founder William Tsui, who worked in medical device IT before moving into hospitality and previously ran the bar program at San Francisco's Lazy Bear, according to Bartenders Business. He co-founded Viridian, which opened in February 2020 and was inspired by the partners' passion for hospitality and Asian-American heritage.
The evening is structured around two seatings, at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., with round-table banquet dining, a format designed to encourage mingling across generations, according to Visit Oakland. Peony is located at 388 9th St. Ste. 288 in Oakland, inside Pacific Renaissance Plaza.
The Last Banquet Hall Standing
Peony has operated in Oakland Chinatown for well over 20 years and is now the only remaining Chinese banquet-style restaurant in the city, per the Oaklandside's reporting. The restaurant runs three departments — dim sum, barbecue and wok cooking — with roughly 100 items on its dim sum menu served all day, and it's known for live seafood tanks, Peking duck and special-occasion dishes. Almost all large banquet-style Chinese restaurants in San Francisco and Oakland have closed.
Peony nearly closed during the pandemic. The restaurant has also anchored civic life in the neighborhood, regularly hosting events like the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce's annual Spring Banquet. On June 26, Peony took part in the Chamber's Summer Renaissance initiative at Pacific Renaissance Plaza, offering a coconut rabbit pudding voucher.
Anna Zhu, Peony's outreach manager who also handles the restaurant's social media, said the collaboration aims to bring younger generations and families back to Oakland Chinatown, according to the Oaklandside's reporting. It's a goal that threads through much of what Peony has attempted since the pandemic: pulling new faces into a dining room built for 500 without losing the affordability and tradition that has kept the neighborhood's last big banquet hall alive this long.
