Vanessa’s Dumplings

Vanessa’s Dumpling House
118A Eldridge Street between Grand and Broome
212-625-8008/8118

I love to travel. Unfortunately, travel is expensive, so I don’t get to do it that often. I was fortunate enough in college to spend 3 semesters abroad in a total of nine different countries on three continents and one very large island, so I’ve been able to experience quite a bit. And I’ve been able to eat quite a bit too. Some of the best food I had was in Beijing; real Chinese food is nothing like the greasy, uniformly-flavored, mostly unidentifiable piles of yuck we call Chinese food in the US. Luckily for me, Manhattan is home to a huge Chinese population that has transformed a size-able chunk of the southeastern portion of the island into a veritable piece of their homeland, with Chinese-style markets and authentic Chinese food. All of this is only a short walk from my apartment and I make a point of heading down there as often as possible.

It was on one of many such jaunts that I discovered Vanessa’s Dumpling House. The owner has two other similar establishments in other locations in Manhattan, but her flagship restaurant is by far the best. It’s a no-frills restaurant; you stand in line to place your order, you stand while they put your order together, and if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to sit down to eat. If you’re not lucky (which is most of the time; the place is constantly packed) then you will stand while you eat, too. However, the food is more than worth it and the prices are equivalent to what you would pay in Beijing. Vanessa’s also did a total renovation of their space quite recently, and the place looks great; the kitchen is open so you can see everything being made right in front of you while you wait.

My default order is a delicious egg and chive pancake. It’s not exactly a pancake though; the dough is slightly crispy on the outside and a bit chewy, and it’s quite thin. Inside is a mixture of scrambled egg, chive, and chopped up glass noodles. I’m fairly small so on a normal day one of these is a meal for me, and at $1.50 it is far from breaking the bank.

On my most recent visit I arrived at 5 pm and hadn’t eaten anything all day, so I ordered a sesame pancake with vegetables in addition to my usual order. Again, this isn’t a pancake, and it’s also completely different from the type of pancake I always get with egg and chive. Batter is poured into a huge saucepan, liberally sprinkled with sesame seeds and the dough is pan-fried until it is cooked all the way through. When this type of pancake has finished cooking, it’s about the size of a large pizza, and the dough is around an inch thick. The pancake is cut into 8 slices, and then sliced in half so it can be flipped open and filled. The veggie version I got was filled with fresh cucumber, carrots and lots of cilantro and drizzled with a bit of soy sauce (I added a healthy dose of Sri Racha chili sauce as well; spice makes everything better in my book). The pan-frying gives the bread a nice crunch on the outside, and there is so much turnover on the food that the pancake is still warm when it’s stuffed with vegetables. The vegetables are crisp as well, and their coolness is a great counterpoint to the warm chewy bread. The toasted sesame seeds and cilantro are delicious together as well. For the carnivores, the sesame pancake is available with a duck, beef, or pork filling as well. My veggie version was $1.50, and the duck is the most expensive at $2.25.

Of course, you won’t be let down by the restaurant’s namesake dumplings. They are available boiled or pan fried, with many different types of filling (cabbage and pork, chive and pork, vegetable, basil and chicken, shrimp, celery and pork, string bean and pork, beef and corn, and dill and pork). I haven’t ordered them myself, but I often mooch off of my friends. The vegetable dumplings are fantastic, as are the pork and chive. Although I haven’t eaten them at Vanessa’s, I often buy their dumplings frozen to take home. 50 dumplings for $9 lasts me for around 12 meals, served over an assortment of vegetables and mixed with dumpling sauce. They take about fifteen minutes to boil and make for an effortless but delicious dinner. You can also take home pork buns and a few types of wonton, but I need to make my way through the dumpling list before I venture out (I’m a little OCD, what can I say).

The only downside of Vanessa’s is that the “assembly line” is a bit disorganized. On my visit earlier today I waited a full fifteen minutes to get my food, while people who ordered after me came and left before my one item was ready. Additionally, there is almost always a language barrier as well, so there is occasionally some mis-communication about who belongs to what order (after you place your order they give you a receipt with a number on it, which in theory is called out when your order is complete). If you receive the wrong items, it can be a bit problematic to explain what happened. The thing is though, in my opinion I’m the outsider in this situation, so the language barrier is something I should work on, not the other way around. If this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you may want to skip Vanessa’s (though I think that’s a pretty silly reason to miss out on delicious food!). Besides, being surrounded by the swirl of Mandarin Chinese and tasting authentic Chinese food, if I close my eyes it feels like I’m back in Beijing, an experience that I like to prolong by walking around Chinatown and its many markets … but those are topics for another post!