Brooklyn Dumpling Shop opens its new Austin location, at 1401 E. Sixth today, September 12. This red-hot fusion dumpling brand was launched two years ago by Stratis Morfogen and chef Skinny Mei in New York City’s East Village and was brought to Austin by local investor Alex Liebert.
We stopped by the soft open on Monday to check the place out and were impressed. The automat-style ordering is part of the concept’s selling point, with a kiosk used for ordering and a scannable receipt used to retrieve your order from a heated locker when it’s ready. This type of system is perfect for the dense urban environment that central East Sixth has become; Liebert is looking to open more of these restaurants in the Austin area.
The menu is heavily Asian-influenced with a fusion twist. There are customizable bowls with rice, noodles, fries, or greens; customers can choose a sauce and protein. The dumplings come in traditional styles (pork, vegetable, or chicken) as well as more fusion specialty fillings (Korean BBQ, lamb gyro, chicken Parmesan and Reuben, to name a few, along with dessert dumplings). When we met with Liebert at BDS, he suggested his personal favorite of mac and cheese dumplings with a side of buffalo sauce; they’d make great late-night stoner food.
Brooklyn Dumpling Shop offers beer and wine, along with a couple of specialty frozen drinks, red velvet frosé and lychee frosé. The shop seats 30 and holds 20 lockers and, given its proximity to Austin mainstay Volstead Lounge and Hotel Vegas along with the continued growth of Austin’s Eastside, promises to be bustling on the weekends.
Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is open from 11am to 9pm every day, with late hours extending until 1 or 2am on the weekends.
This article appears in The 33rd Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.