It’s spring of 2018, and Grace Tseng, a Taiwanese American, once again finds herself on mainland China, leading a group of American high school students on a tour. It’s dinnertime, and the kids are in a small restaurant in a provincial city south of Beijing, a truly authentic place, the kind that doesn’t get many foreigners. With her native Mandarin and fluent biculturalism, Grace gracefully guides her fellow Americans through some of the menu’s more exotic options — tripe? chicken feet? — ehm… perhaps the kids’ palates aren’t there yet. Still, Grace wants them to eat like a local, and, as it turns out, they will, but only by ordering the same thing each and every time. “I found out that when these kids are traveling in China,” Grace says with a laugh, “their comfort food other than McDonalds is dumplings.”
It was an insight that gave her an idea, a dumpling-shaped idea, filling her thoughts with thoughts of fillings. ‘There are so many dumpling shops in Taiwan,’ she would often find herself musing. ‘So why not in Nashville?’ So, after a year in The Big Apple, Grace returned to Nashville, the city where her mother, Mama Yang, a native of Guang Fu, Taiwan, now lived. I missed my mom’s food. I grew up eating her dumplings. She is a very talented cook.”
It was December 2020, and time for that mother-daughter talk Grace had long had in mind. The two sat down. “Mom, Nashville is ready for authenticity, for our Taiwanese culture. I want to start a dumpling business. Will you help me?” Grace’s mom did not hesitate; 當一個媽媽最希望的就是看到自己的小孩子健健康康的長大成人，不顧一切付出任何代價。所以當我的大女兒問我有沒有興趣然後可不可以幫她成立 這個事業的時候，我想都沒想的就答應了她。我知道自已的能力加上大女兒又這麼有勇氣的踏出這一步，當媽媽的我當然全力以赴，全力支持她嘍！(“What a mother wants most is to see her children happy and healthy, no matter the price. So when my oldest daughter asked me if I could help her set up this business, I agreed without even thinking about it. I knew my abilities, so I put all my support behind her!”)
Mama Yang & Daughter was born, taking residence in Citizen Kitchen on Charlotte Pike and selling their wares at farmers markets around town, Grace handling all things business, Mama Yang all things food. The first items on the menu were traditional Taiwanese fare such as pork dumplings, scallion pancakes, marinated cucumbers, and popcorn chicken, the latter a ubiquitous street food in Taiwan. However, since Grace and Mama yang knew some people don’t eat pork or meat of any kind, Mama Yang perfected the recipes for two new dumpling choices: a chicken with mushrooms and an all-vegetable option filled with cabbage, corn, and carrots.
But perfecting the recipes is only part of the process; after all, dumplings do not fold themselves. And, for that, Mama Yang has a system as exacting as her ingredients. Her original pork dumplings require 8 folds altogether, 4 on each side. The chicken and mushroom dumplings have 8 folds, but all go in the same direction. The vegetable dumplings are folded twice on each side. Not only does the system allow for easy visual identification of what’s inside — fillings so generous that Mama Yang dumplings do not collapse upon cooking — but the folds allow the dumplings to be filled generously, which look a lot like a yuanbao” little gold and silver ingots that served as Chinese currency for thousands of years. Grace points out, “and are meant to bring fortune and prosperity to our customers!”
With Mama Yang perfectly folding up to 120 dumplings an hour and 2,000 dumplings a week, that is a lot of prosperity going around town. However, folding all those dumplings is taking a physical toll. “Mama Yang is talking about pain in her joints,” Grace says. “We want to make sure her legacy lives on, but, at the same time, we don’t know how committed people are to learning this complicated, skilled craft.” And it is a craft. “Her folds are a 10 on a 10-point scale,” Grace says of her mom’s handcrafted dumplings. Only very recently has Grace herself finally perfected the art of dumpling folding, reaching the level of perfection that Mama Yang will allow her to sell them. But still, even with the two of them now folding, it’s hard to make enough as demand for their dumplings keeps rising as word of their quality gets out. Nashvillians with ties to Taiwan and China, are amazed to find such authentic dumplings in Middle Tennessee.
To quickly develop a taste for these dumplings for yourself, check them out at their new restaurant at 83 van Buren Street in Germantown next to Oku. And look for the Edible Nashville Cover.
