My history of New Year’s Eve celebrations has run pretty much from sad to sorrowful.

Growing up in New York City, I actually went to Times Square many years ago — long before they started corralling the celebrants for hours on end, forcing them to wear adult diapers. My memory of it was that it was cold … bone-chilling cold.

After the ball descended, the assembled masses all ran for the subway entrances. The New York subway system had, thoughtfully, gone on a post-midnight schedule. Meaning that several hundred thousand of us were clustered on the edge of the platforms, praying for a train — and that no one would push us off.

Then, there was the time I was invited to a gala dinner at a friend’s house — only to discover the gala dinner consisted of bags of chips and cans of onion dip, with Lawrence Welk playing on the TV, and a lot of pitiful characters sitting on couches, trying to stay awake.

There was the meal at a favorite Italian restaurant, where I discovered, too late, that what was being served was a meal consisting of two pasta entrées, a green salad, and some sort of store-bought chocolate cake for dessert. I think the meal included a split of champagne. That’s half a bottle, for two persons. It was bad champagne. And they charged too much for it.

After moving to the West Coast, to simplify New Year’s Eve, I decided to stay on East Coast time the night of Dec. 31. This allowed me to celebrate early, and then go to sleep whenever I wanted. And to get up early enough for the Rose Parade, if I wanted to.

After all these years, there’s been only one New Year’s Eve that stands out as an unmitigated triumph — and it involved going into a world where Dec. 31 is not New Year’s Eve. I organized a crowd to go to one of the sprawling Chinese seafood restaurants of Monterey Park for an early evening banquet. It was quite the experience.

Getting off at the Atlantic Avenue exit, just after 6 p.m., I found myself stuck in a traffic jam, caused by police running a sobriety check. At 6 o’clock? The Chinese New Year wasn’t coming up for another month or more, so this was just another night. Except that the larger hall of the restaurant had been taken over by what I was told was a Chinese high school reunion. There were hundreds of celebrants. There were speeches and songs — all in Chinese. There were acrobatic acts. Prizes were awarded. And I sat in an adjacent room, eating shrimp and lobster, and having a very good time.

I notably remember bringing my own wine, and asking if there was a corkage fee. I was told, yes, $10. Per bottle, I asked? No, I was told — for the table, for the evening. What’s not to love? I had a great meal — and was home early enough to catch the ball coming down in Times Square.

I’ve repeated it many times in the years since. A Chinese restaurant New Year’s Eve on Dec. 31 has always been a joy. And reasonably priced, too. (I’ve also varied the feeds with meals at Thai restaurants, Filipino spots, Vietnamese places; Persian, Lebanese and Indian cafes; Korean barbecues, even the occasional Cambodian eatery, of which we have precious few! The prices are always great!

We bring our own fun with us, which does not include funny hats and noisemakers! These days, if you’re at Times Square, you’re locked in till after midnight. How is that fun? But meals at the following restaurants are always a joy — how could it be otherwise?

With the closing of Royal Garden in Cerritos, our most notable Chinese seafood house has gone the way of all flesh. But at least Northern Café (11468 South St., Cerritos; 562-402-9588, www.northerncafecerritos.com), though not primarily a fish house, does offer a sufficient selection of seafood dishes — among them grilled red stripe whole rockfish, sweet and sour fish filet, fish filet in hot chili sauce, and fish filet with soy bean paste. Heck, even shrimp chow mein, for those who like a little retro for dinner.

The Northern Café — which is situated in the same very busy mall that also is home to such crowd-pleasers as Gen Korean BBQ, 85C Bakery, North Shore Poke Co. and Sake2Me Sushi — does not look like what you might expect a mall Chinese restaurant to look like. There’s open ductwork, the sort of light bars found in art galleries and, matching the lights, modernistic art on the walls, including colorful drawings of what seem to be some of the café’s dishes. Also, there’s pottery on shelves.

Were they offering tuna tartare rather than chicken gizzard kebabs, it wouldn’t be a surprise. Even the takeaway menu is bright and glossy — multicolored with flowers and fruits, and photos of numerous dishes.

The point is, this isn’t an old-school Chinese restaurant. Northern Café is decidedly now, with the northern dishes of the moment — even if you will find chow mein and chow fun on the edge of the menu. Orange chicken, too.

They’re smart enough to understand that spicy duck neck isn’t for everyone. But lamb is. Lamb is notable at Northern Café — in the sautéed grilled lamb with cumin, and with scallions…and on a plate of three smallish lamb kebabs, heavy with spice, impossible not to eat as fast as you can. This is food that goes from nourishment to obsession in nothing flat.

And speaking of the kebabs, they’re a small, tasty appetizer that comes out fast along with the cold cucumber with garlic; seaweed salad and spiced peanuts come out even faster. I tried the “chicken soft bones,” which weren’t all that soft. They were chicken bits on lumps of cartilage, which my server insisted were edible, and I insisted were going to crack my molars. He told me he ate them all the time in his village near Shanghai. It’s something you have to grow up with, I guess.

There’s plenty more — a section of grilled dishes, and of griddled dishes (including grilled cooked bullfrog, which doesn’t appeal near as much as the griddle-cooked spare ribs; sorry). There are hot pots, and enough vegetarian dishes to keep your favorite veggie happy — mapo tofu is always a treat.

And if you feel like sticking to the tried and true, somewhat unexpectedly, there’s orange chicken and  sweet and sour fish filet, twice-cooked pork and beef with broccoli. There aren’t many restaurants that offer both pig intestines with pickled cabbage and kung pao chicken. But then, Northern Café isn’t like many restaurants — either in its food or its style.

On a street of many food heavy mini-malls, SUP Noodle Bar (11314 South St., Cerritos; 562-402-8286, www.supnoodlebar.com) is, like Northern Café, surrounded by a world of restaurants — in this case Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, Lucille’s Smokehouse BBQ, Chronic Tacos, Chung Chun Rice Corndogs, Umaya Ramen, Tasty Noodle House, Gyu-Kaku, King Shabu Shabu, Poke Bar, Panera Bread and Frostbite Crepes.

That said, the wildly popular SUP Noodle Bar always seems the busiest, where the crowd outside speaks volumes about our love of pho. For this is Pho Heaven — serving heavenly pho! But then, there’s plenty of fusion on the menu at SUP as well. All you have to do is order the outlandishly large, totally over-the-top appetizer called Shaken House Fries to appreciate how madcap this all is. It’s a small mountain of crispy skinny fries, layered with what SUP refers to as “shaken beef,” though “shaking beef” is the more common name.

The traditional recipe involves cubed rib eye, garlic, brown sugar, soy, oyster sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, black pepper, white sugar, vinegar, onions, watercress, tomatoes — and goodness knows what else — all stir-fried intro a wonderfully aromatic pile which is usually served atop rice. Jumbling it onto skinny fries — or fat fries, for that matter — is a very alternative culinary universe. And a lot of chow for an appetizer. Especially since it’s further topped with sharp cheddar, and spicy tartar sauce. It’s a very tasty, very gilded lily of a dish.

There also are truffle fries, topped with parmesan and Italian truffle oil, a chicken nugget basket (with skinny fries and spicy mayo), garlic chicken wings and parmesan chicken wings. And just to remind us that this is a Vietnamese restaurant, there are fried pork dumplings — “Golden Bao.”

But then, you flip over the menu, and find a section of Peruvian lomo saltado — filet mignon, rib eye, shrimp or tofu, served with both french fries and white rice, with both a “white wine soy” (White wine and soy? Is that possible?) and aji verde aioli. It’s all wonderfully mad.

And then, you turn to the page of pho noodle soups, and at last you’re back in realm of the restaurant’s namesake. And very happily, too. In a part of the world with an abundance of pho, this is one of the best, with a broth created by boiling bones for 24 hours, at which point they’ve essentially liquefied, and white onions, scallions and cilantro are included for additional flavor.

But wait, there’s more. Along with the lomo saltado, there’s a choice of eight fried rice dishes, including one with Spam (which is oddly, or maybe not so oddly, not available in the pho; it’s possible Spam will overwhelm the flavor of the soup…and all the other ingredients as well!) Fried rice with Spam sounds more Hawaiian than anything else. And the presence on the menu of both a Shirley Temple (usually lemonade with grenadine) and a Roy Rogers (cola with grenadine) sends the restaurant in yet another direction — since they’re not served as substitutes for alcoholic cocktails, they’re just…there.

To find Nomad Asian Bistro (6563 E. Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach; 562-430-6888, www.nomadasianbistrolongbeach.com), you have to become a bit of a nomad, searching amidst the numerous restaurants in the Long Beach Marketplace, until you find it semi-concealed on a back road — behind branches of El Torito, Claim Jumper and the Tilted Kilt.

That’s probably appropriate for a Chinese restaurant that mixes the dishes we know well with dishes from the Hui people — the ethnic tribes that live along the Silk Road of the Northwestern Provinces and Central Plains, where the cuisine is influenced by travelers from China on one side, and from Persia and the Middle East on the other. Which is to say, a meal at Nomad is as much of a culinary adventure as you want it to be.

There are actually several unexpected elements here. Beyond the culinary twists and turns, there’s a spacious outdoor patio, a rarity in Chinese restaurants; outdoor dining does not seem to go with potstickers and broccoli chicken, though there’s no reason it wouldn’t. Or perhaps there is.

I’ve long heard that the best Chinese restaurants are the ones where the food is rushed to your table, still sizzling from the wok. If you’re eating on an outdoor patio, that food will cool quickly. It’s not at its best, I hear. And I’m willing to believe that, because the last time I was at Nomad, there was a chill wind blowing; I’d have had to sit outside in a down jacket.

Nomad is a cheerful restaurant, a bit oversized, with an efficient staff, and a menu that stretches to about 100 dishes — a lot from a restaurant far from our local Asian enclaves. If you long for the dishes so many of us grew up with, it’s good to find them here — those who worry about the disappearing world of old school Chinese cooking should find enough here to produce many happy meals. I’m talking about good old-fashioned chop suey, made with chicken or beef. (And with sole, which is a new one on me.)

There are wonton “stars,” filled with cream cheese and “krab.” If you long for wonton soup, here it is. Ditto chow mein, with chicken, beef, shrimp, veggie or “three flavors.” (The chow mein comes two ways — one with handmade noodles, the other with commercially made noodles. A point of difference that’s rarely made at local Chinese restaurants; it’s usually one way or the other.)

The classic dishes here are well prepared; they bring back lots of happy memories of the Chinese food we used to live on. I’m happy to dig into a plate of spring rolls, with chicken or with veggies, as you wish. The honey-ginger chicken wings are pretty sweet, maybe too sweet, but that didn’t keep me from inhaling them. And much the same can be said of sugary preparations like the orange chicken, the honey-ginger fried chicken, the orange beef, the honey walnut shrimp and so forth.

But times change, and tastes change as well. Which is why the Hui dishes (or at least the dishes from the Northern Provinces) are so appealing. Northern Chinese cooking involves a lot of lamb — and over there, more likely mutton than lamb. The cumin lamb is a wonderful thing — tender and sweet, as lamb tends to be, in a thick basting of pungent cumin, a hard dishes to stop chewing.

The lamb with scallions, is also heavy with garlic and ginger — a major flavor explosion. There’s lamb with pickled cabbage and dry red chiles, and lamb with garlic and jalapeño. There’s lamb tripe. And a blackboard by the entrance lists lamb offal. Which is not a dish for those who dream of fried rice. Lamb offal is also served as a soup. And there’s lamb with pickled cabbage. A litany of strong flavors, that set Nomad apart.

We’ve got a lot of good Thai restaurants here in Southern California — it’s gone way beyond the days when Siamese eateries would label themselves “Thai-Chinese,” because no one knew what the heck pad Thai and mee krob might be. We’ve moved from the days of generic Thai, to regionally specific Thai, where the cooking of the north and the south are recognized as distinctly different, and the influence of neighbors like Laos, Burma and Vietnam are both respected and duly noted.

But even with that said, Panvimarn Thai Cuisine (4101 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach; 562-425-2601, www.panvimarnthaicuisine.com) is unique, not just because of the quality of its cooking, but also because the food is served in a room that’s, if not exactly elegant, at least a lot nicer than the norm. There’s a multitude of wall decorations and hangings, and a sense of being at what might be one of the best places to dine off Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok.

So, what does one dine upon in this sedate setting? Well, the menu is both encyclopedic, and a bit goofy, with sections headed “Oodles of noodles” and “Rice is nice.” At the heart of the menu is a section called “Panvimarn 9 Curries,” which ranges from emerald green curry (green coconut sauce), ruby curry (red coconut sauce) and gold curry (yellow coconut sauce), to exotic like roast duck curry, baby pork rib curry and spicy shrimp curry.

Of course there’s beef satay and chicken satay — “This will tickle your taste buds and make you scream of more!” says the menu. From the North comes house-made pork sausage with ginger and cashews, along with fried Thai beef jerky, which is a dish that verges on complete and total addiction.

One of the best ways to sample the menu is with the appetizer plate called a Panvimarn Delight — satay, spring rolls, shrimp blankets, chicken- and shrimp-filled money bags and fried wontons. There’s a perfectly good appetizer of noodles, green papaya, shrimp and peanuts called “Bellflower Blvd” — a name probably unknown on the Chao Praya River. But what the heck?

The menu goes on and on — many soups, many salads, superb barbecue chicken, and a section of “Meatless Meals.” As with Indian cooking, vegetarians can be very happy here — the spices are so intense, you won’t notice the absence of meat. In fact, you’ll probably celebrate it.

As my diet has evolved over the years, much like master chef/humanitarian Jose Andres, I’ve found my eating moving more toward the happy world of vegetables. This is not to say I’m a vegetarian (or a vegan). I’ve just shifted from perceiving meals as a hunk of meat, with veggies as a sidekick…to a meal where vegetables star…and meat makes a cameo appearance.

And when I say meat, I mostly mean beef — the “red meat” that’s become a line in the sand for would-be healthy diners. Fish and chicken are our friends. But vegetables are our best friends.

And then, I go to a place like Vinh Loi Tofu (11818 South St., Cerritos; 562-403-3388, www.vinhloitofu.com), a tofu-based vegan Vietnamese, and I have to confront the next level of my relationship with meat and vegetables. One must respect what they do at Vinh Loi. One must also ask if tofu is a vegetable? Well, of course it is. But it’s been transformed from soy beans (our much-loved edamame) to soy milk to soy curds to prepared tofu in dishes. It’s a Franken-vegetable.

I’m not sure I’ll ever love it. I’ll eat it, and often quite happily. Often in one of those palate-destroying Szechuan dishes, flavored with fiery peppers and sautéed pork, where the tofu is hidden under a mountain of extreme flavors. At Vinh Loi, the tofu is always…tofu. Even in a stir-fry, it’s tofu. And since the cooking is decidedly subtle, the tofu isn’t hidden. And so…tofu is what we go here for. Tofu…and a meal that represents, as the menu says, “A better way of life.”

What I prefer to focus on is the line, found on the website, encouraging us to “Indulge in authentic, flavorful Southeast Asian Cuisine prepared from fresh ingredients and bold spices.” Which is what Vinh Loi is very good at.

Putting aside my mixed opinions on tofu in particular, and vegan meat substitutes in general, this is fine chow, a small selection of dishes, drawn from the extensive world of Vietnamese (and to a lesser degree, Thai) cooking. The menu is about as minimalist as a Vietnamese menu ever is. Rather than dozens of pho noodle soup variations, each with a different combination of meat, there’s just one — the Ironman Pho (love the name!), a vegetable broth, with rice noodles, tofu and “beef” slices, topped with onions (both white and green), cilantro, beansprouts, basil, lime and jalapeño.

It’s one of five soups on the menu, a very busy section — a lemongrass and chili soup called Kevin #1, a Curry Soup (my personal favorite), a noodle-less vegetable soup, and a wheat noodle ramen soup, which comes with fried shallots, an unexpectedly elegant touch.

The appetizers lean toward the rolls, also five of them, one of which was made with “ham,” another with “beef,” and a third with “chicken” that’s got a kind of spongy texture. It’s improved by the good peanut sauce that comes with all the rolls. Peanut sauce is happily vegan, though it does open up a world of allergies. Which is why there’s a section on the menu headed “Peanut Allergies” — detailing the availability of coconut sauce, sesame soy sauce, gluten-free soy, and something called VL Dressing — for those who can’t eat peanuts. So many dietary hoops to jump through there — vegan and peanut-free and gluten-free.

And the concern continues into the “Dry Noodles,” where we find that those with a wheat/gluten allergy can substitute gluten-free noodles, clear mung bean noodles, rice noodles or shredded zucchini, along with a gluten-free sauce. Dining out these days can be so tricky!

And for those on an old-fashioned diet, there are salads as well, where the vegetables are clearly vegetables. Though you do have a choice of various vegan meats to go in the salads. I chose a meat to taste it. But I put it on the side, and stuck with the salad. It tasted fresh and real. It hadn’t been manipulated. For me, it defines “A better way of life.” A vegetable that’s just…a vegetable. And a good way…to begin a new year.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.

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