64 FEBRUARY 2021

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AS SHE ADORNS her circular dining table with

vibrant purple, red, and hot pink dahlias from

Long Island’s North Fork Flower Farm, one thing

is clear: Danielle Chang was born to host. When

she’s not producing Lucky Chow, her around-the-

world series on Asian food and culture that recently

aired its fourth season on PBS (or throwing food

festivals around the country with chefs like David

Chang, Anita Lo, and Masaharu Morimoto through

her company LuckyRice), this is where she’s most

at home: in a stunning penthouse apartment in New

York City’s SoHo neighborhood, getting ready to

entertain. In this case, she’s preparing to carefully

celebrate the upcoming Lunar New Year with a small

group of close friends and family. “I’ve been throw-

ing Lunar New Year parties for about three decades

now,” she says. “In China, people literally take two

weeks off from work for the holidays. Everything’s

shut down, and people just feast together.”

While this year’s gathering is necessarily smaller

than in the past, Chang is still welcoming good

things to come in 2021. Her Lunar New Year dishes

emphasize good health by incorporating restorative

ingredients from Chinese herbology: Goji berries add

a brilliant vermilion hue to her eight-treasure rice;

chrysanthemum flowers suspended in ice cubes

float in a stunning, ginseng-infused Japanese shochu

punch; black sesame seeds are tucked inside sweet

sticky rice balls. Chang’s love of traditional Chi-

nese herbs extends far beyond this Lunar New Year

menu; earlier this month, she and Lucky Chow’s

new cohost, William Li, launched a plant-based

supplement line called The Hao Life, which bottles

many of those same medicinal ingredients.

Chang’s home channels the same uplifting energy

as her cooking and also reflects her love of interior

design, a nod to the time she spent as a profes-

sor of contemporary art history. An Ochre crystal

chandelier illuminates the feast below with a gentle

glimmer; a pair of kidney-shaped living room sofas

create a comfortable framework for conversations;

on the upper terrace, a canopied daybed from Janus

et Cie lies beneath a string of globe lights. In the

kitchen, exposed on glass shelves, sits a strikingly

expansive collection that doubles as decoration: a

set of jars, the contents of which are partly culinary, partly medicinal. “I

collect lots of spices while filming,” she explains, “like fox nuts, which are

incredibly healing for women after they give birth, or star anise, which

gives red braised pork that lovely licorice flavor.”

While the penthouse exudes an unmistakably airy, organic minimalism,

the view from the terrace is a bustling dramatic foil. “When I first moved

to New York, [my apartment] was considered to be in Chinatown. Now,

it’s considered SoHo,” she says. “I love the energy of Chinatown. I lived in

Taiwan until I was 5 and grew up with very traditional Chinese parents—I

don’t think I tried anything non-Chinese like a hamburger or a hot dog

until I was at least 12. Soy sauce courses through my veins, and my mom

and I will still take little packages of soy sauce to sneak into restaurants.”

Chang stays true to her roots when assembling this Lunar New Year

menu. In Chinese culture, citrus symbolizes luck and fertility, so oranges, LOCATION FOOD STYLING: DANI MCREYNOLDS