The New York City automat is not dead!
At Manhattan’s Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, you can order the so-called “dumplings reimagined,” and the automat — or, vending machine — will spit out a Chinese takeout box with your mac ’n cheese dumplings or smashed apple pie dumplings. I don’t recommend it. There are much better dumplings on St. Mark’s Place.
At home this holiday, Gavin Walsh ’24 and I set out to try all the dumplings on the Lower East Side street. It was a somewhat strange task: the block is better known for tattooing high schoolers and cheap piercings than takeout. But during the holidays on a Friday night, St. Mark’s was a worthy alternative to the hour-long waits in nearby Chinatown.
Our first stop was the aforementioned dumpling automat at Brooklyn Dumpling Shop. The shop was practically empty except for me and Gavin and the white glare of the tablet on which we were ordering. The automat’s rows of glass boxes were dirty and dizzying, each with a desperate label reading: “DO NOT TOUCH THE BOXES. DO NOT TOUCH THE BOXES.” I guess people today still aren’t technologically savvy enough to understand the automat.
I let the small door open slowly before revealing our chicken teriyaki selection. The dumplings were fine — oily and flavorful — but the atmosphere chased us away. This was certainly not the premiere dumpling spot of St. Mark’s Place.
After our first failed attempt, we walked down St. Mark’s for a while and hung around Search and Destroy, the notorious punk consignment shop that’s now more like a Spirit Halloween. The exterior was swarmed by a bunch of New York University types, clutching their skateboards and cameras.
One kid looked sort of out of place — his demeanor didn’t fit his leather jacket and baggy jeans, his face wide and unassuming like a cabbage. But he also just looked young, compared to a nearby cabal of grey-haired men who seemed permanently stationed outside of Search and Destroy. The men had set up folding chairs at the bottom of the stoop, chain smoking and yelling at each other in raspy voices over the din of St. Mark’s.
Gavin and I chose the next place, Nan Xiang Soup Dumplings, because some guy on Tripadvisor said it served the best dumplings in all of New York City. It was packed, but we soon realized that everyone was there for the same reason: the couple next to us, visiting from Florida, credited the same guy on Tripadvisor for their visit.
We ordered the sampler, an array of meat and veggie dumplings of pink, yellow and brown dough. The dumplings were serviceable and soupy, but average. Lesson learned: don’t let some guy on Tripadvisor choose your dumplings.
Our last stop was Dumpling Man, further east on St. Mark’s and distant from the hum of tattoo guns. At Dumpling Man, you sit at a bar in a basement in front of a short glass panel. On the other side, the cooks fold pork into dough, cinching the edges deliberately between their pointer and thumb.
There, we certainly found the best dumplings on St. Mark’s. We ordered an array of choices: pork and veggie, fried and steamed, two different sauces. There was an intimacy, patrons packed in at countertops and huddled over small trays. The food was by far the best tasting of the three, and the shop was devoid of tourists or an oppressive electronic glow. If you’re in New York during the holidays, it’s a venerable Chinatown alternative.
But good dumplings aren’t limited to Chinatown and St. Mark’s. New York City is an overflowing cornucopia of filled doughy goods. Afterward, I went to pick up another friend from their gig at Gnocchi on Ninth. We sat outside the Bryant Park holiday market and ate another kind of dumpling, also out of Chinese takeout boxes.
Charlotte Hampton is a reporter from New York, N.Y., studying government and philosophy. She likes writing about politics and art in the Upper Valley. Outside of The D, she likes reading Clarice Lispector, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Annie Dillard and one sentimental copy of “A Coney Island of the Mind.”
