six thick skin dumplings
I learned a few weeks ago that my favorite dumplings in my hometown don't exist anymore.
I don't think that anyone who ever had these dumplings would agree that they're the best - they had a thick, doughy layer of skin surrounding an nondescript blend of meat and seasoning, bursting at the seams of their Chinese takeout box. They were boiled and fried, one side of them crisped just to the point of brown-blackness. I love these dumplings. I yearn to get something even close to similar to these where I live now, even though to my disdain, Sung suggests that you wouldn't want dumplings with those qualities.
Truthfully, I don't even know the name of the store they came from. It was a hole in the wall American-Chinese spot, nestled unexpectedly on the corner of a street that was entirely Italian restaurants in an Italian neighborhood. It pains me that its been replaced by something slickly painted, with a bright pink sign hanging above. It disappeared without a trace, and I wouldn't have even known it closed if a friend wasn't asking about places to go while visiting, and in trying to find the name by clicking through Google Maps street view down a street I've walked thousands of times, there it wasn't (August 2024).
I think about the crispy, yet bready, skin soaked in soy sauce, passing the laden plastic fork that could barely hold its weight between my mother and I. We're sitting on a bench in a small "playground" - more a stone walled concrete area with some benches and tables, that served as my elementary school playground for the 5-8th graders.
After my sister had already moved on to a different middle school, my mom would pick me up from our elementary school, pushing along my old foldable stroller with boats she now uses to carry groceries - nothing like the fortified steel vehicles toddlers these days get - and we'd take a circular route to dumplings, then back towards my school to sit and share this box of 6. We'd sit until we finished the whole box, sharing a single dumpling at a time. I find it hard to remember now what we talked about, if anything.
Opening the box was always something of a struggle, given the size of dumpling and how the top barely closed, pressing the metal wire out of shape. We'd dump a little container of soy sauce over the top, trying to make sure it was evenly distributed across the top dumpling before it settled on the bottom. She'd always give me the first bite, after blowing on each dumpling carefully, and before each pass.
I must've eaten these dumplings hundreds of times before I too, moved on to a different school in a different place.
It's hard to imagine my mom eating these dumplings now - she no longer eats pork and getting her to go to small hole in the wall food establishments don't always feel worth the effort it would take to convince her they're clean.
I wonder if she misses them as much as I do.