In May 2021, as New York City was still reeling from a pandemic that shook the city to its core, a restaurant opened that was perfect for life during the time of COVID, supplying comfort food and social distancing at the same time.
Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, located in Manhattan’s East Village, offers contactless ordering and delivery of a variety of novelty dumplings. You order your meal on a screen, swipe your credit card, and then wait in front of what looks like a wall of microwave ovens until your ticket number flashes on a screen with a corresponding locker number. Voilà! The locker opens and you extract your meal.
For this, we have Stratis Morfogen, a New York-based restaurateur, to thank. Miamians might know Morfogen from his now-closed South Beach collaboration with chef Philippe Chow. In New York, Morfogen is behind heavy hitters like Jue Lan Club and Brooklyn Chop House with partners Robert ”Don Pooh” Cummins and Dave Thomas.
Morfogen is no stranger to dumplings. In December 2020, he published Damn Good Dumplings, a book that includes recipes for 60 different varieties of boiled- and steamed-dough dumplings.