Mooncakes, ramen, fried ice cream, taiyaki, DJs and a live acrobatic lion dance performance. These are all part of the Darling Square Moon Festival that's taking over the Haymarket precinct from Friday, September 15, until Sunday, October 1. The traditional Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival will be celebrated over two weeks of festivities, with a huge program of Darling Square's beloved restaurants and bars whipping up special celebrations for the festival. From Friday, September 15, mooncakes will be all the rage at this fest. The Gong Grocer mooncake stall will pop up outside Maker's Dozen, boasting special mooncake flavours like peach oolong, jasmine, pandan, mango pomelo, and the famed custard lava series. Golden Century's XOPP will also be rolling out an array of its popular mooncakes, including its golden egg custard and red bean lotus root flavours, alongside its famous XO sauce. Region-specific flavours, including Teochew flakey pastry variants, Vietnamese mooncakes, and mochi-adjacent ice-cream 'snow skin' mooncakes, will be available. Elsewhere, IIKO Mazesoba is offering its Tsukimi Mazesoba ramen, mochi taiyaki, milk pudding with peach puree, and a snow skin bunny mooncake. Dopa by Devon will be offering chicken teriyaki, chicken karaage and veggie mini dons for $10, Ume Burger is doing crispy Moon Festival lotus chips, and Chinta Ria has crafted three celebratory set menus dubbed Love, Peace and Happiness. To accompany the various eats on offer, Hello Auntie will be serving up two specially-curated cocktails for the festival period. Sip on Moon Light (a pandan rum with green Chartreuse, pineapple and mango puree) or the 15-08 (gin, dragon fruit, and St. Germain). The Hello Auntie crew will also be slinging an XO tiger prawn dish paired with thyme, XO sauce, lime gel, shiso and nori. Along with the wide variety of eats, there will be a bunch of live music from the likes of Flygirl Tee and Mark Matthews through to DJ Aycuz spinning tracks every weekend. Rounding out the massive program of festivities is an exclusive live acrobatic lion dance performance from Jin Wu Koon on Friday, September 29, as well as an on-site calligraphy bar and lantern retailers — so you can personalise your glowing lanterns with a special message in English or Chinese. There will also be traditional Chinese makeup and face painting artists popping up from Friday, September 29, to Sunday, October 1. Check out the full program at the Darling Square website.
