In June 2026, the Ou Cuisine banquet platform produced a seasonal spin-off: the Dragon Boat Feast. One thousand tables were set, split between eight restaurant locations and eight village community halls. The restaurants included Zhengge Catering, De'er Le, and Zhuhai Fishery ¡ª three brands across eight branches. The village halls included Putao Peng, Xiaqiao, Shijiaba, Hongdian, Nantang Lihe, Nantang Sancun, Huiqiao, and Shuixin.
The feast was the first collaboration between the Wenzhou Dragon Boat Association and the Restaurant, Hotel and Culinary Industry Association. Yao Rongsheng, a Chinese Cuisine Master, led a team of ten national-level master chefs to design and test the menu. Each dish carried a festive name: "Phoenix Presents Auspiciousness," "Sailing with the Waves," "Pearl Reflects Duan Yang," "Riding the Wind and Breaking the Waves." The ingredients were seasonal ¡ª white-cut chicken, yangmei berries, octopus, loquat, duck tongue, raw crab in wine, onion-oiled yellow croaker, sweet potato with steamed crab, Dragon Boat thin pancake. The price was 1,280 yuan per table.
The cultural link runs deep. Wenzhou's dragon boat racing tradition dates back over two thousand years, to the Eastern Ou Kingdom period ¡ª before the legend of Qu Yuan. In 2024, a Rui'an edition of the Dragon Boat Banquet, using local Beiqi yellow croaker, Huling beef, and Lumu bamboo shoots, placed in the top three at the provincial "Beautiful Flavours of Zhejiang ¡ª Hundred Counties, Thousand Bowls" traditional-themed banquet challenge. The organisers said the Dragon Boat Feast would become "an important annual event within the Ou Cuisine Ten-Thousand-Person Banquet platform."
The feast does something the January banquet cannot. It moves half its tables out of restaurants and into village community halls ¡ª into Putao Peng, Hongdian, Shuixin ¡ª where villagers eat at tables set by master chefs who usually work in hotel kitchens. The menu carries the festival's name in every dish. And the table sits next to a two-thousand-year-old tradition that was already old when Qu Yuan was born.
