Dee Started Folding Dumplings With Her Nǎinai, Now She’s Built A Creative Grocer Around Them
“And if it doesn’t work, don’t worry about it—that’s life.”
That’s Daiwen, or Dee to most.
She’s ladling freshly folded dumplings into a steaming pot on a portable induction cooktop, to a half-moon of seven of us in blue kitchen aprons gathered around her. For the past half hour, Dee’s been demonstrating how to pleat dumplings in various ways, weaving in stories of making them with her grandmother as a little girl, barely breaking eye contact as her well-practiced hands pinch, press, tuck and twist a plate of stuffed wheat flour wrappers. Almost comically, it’s with this instinctive choreography she insists the art of making these silky morsels is pretty fail safe.
I first stumbled into Dumps World, a dumpling grocer meets multi-hyphenate space, earlier this year, after spending a morning chugging down the creamy Kopiko goodness from Ada’s Affair and slurping bouncy strands of doenjang and daikon udong from the one-man show that is Kim’s Bop. Like plenty of shopfronts along Glebe Point road, Dumps World could have been easy to pass among the terraces and old-school awnings, but its cartoon-splashed windows and playful signage reeled me in, almost serendipitously.
Inside, Dumps World stretched long and narrow from the street, with the same improbable sense of space as the Room Of Requirement, if you will. A three-door freezer took up almost an entire wall, stacked with brightly illustrated bags of all kinds of frozen goods—fortified chicken broth, congee, Dee’s bolognese and of course, a fair share of dumplings.
The front half of the store had been intentionally dressed like the living room of any design-conscious person’s dreams; three hero USM Haller cabinets sporting vinyl and a black and white Shogun table lamp. A plethora of books lined shelves with copies from Hay and Flack Studio—Dee’s favourite, as she would later tell me.
Towards the back, the space gave way almost seamlessly to a flawless working kitchen glossed out with stainless-steel benches, extraction hoods and a sprawl of stacked bamboo steamers, stockpots, pans, trays and mixing bowls.
Dumps World easily earned itself as a Glebe fixture for me.
I’ve ducked in on weekends for packs of Hainan chicken and pork dumplings, and even left with a jar of Dee’s dangerously addictive crispy chilli oil she graciously plonked into my bag upon leaving one time, so good I ate it by the jar. It was finished within a week.
On all visits, I’ve been lucky enough to fall into some pretty deep conversations with Dee and her partner, Ben, most of which have felt like a sort of shared flowstate at times—at least on my part. I’m reluctant to credit that entirely to the way the space has been designed (it’s not) but it’s hard to ignore how deliberately Dumps World invites people to stick around through its made-to-feel-like-a-living room sensibility. The central table has also been meticulously crafted to the centimetre with peak conversation-making dimensions in mind, so I’m told.
One rainy afternoon, the three of us even sunk into the lounge chairs and chatted for an hour about finding your tribe as an adult, breakups, the importance of spaces that uplift and champion creativity in all its forms, and what might come next for Dumps World. At the time, that last idea was a thought-bubble in motion: Dee floated her concept of dumpling-making workshops.
We agreed that Sydney was hardly short of a social hobby with junk journaling, chess clubs, zine sessions, scrapbooking and mahjong all finding their way into the city’s cultural bloodstream. But from the first time I spoke to Dee, she was pretty clear that what she wanted to create was all about facilitating a kind of gathering that genuinely nurtures connection in all its analogue glory.
And thus, Dumps It Yourself, was born.
“The connection element is really crucial for us. We didn’t want it to feel like a traditional cooking class where you arrive, stand at a bench, follow a recipe and leave,” she says.
“We’ve designed the whole experience to feel less like a cooking class and more like the excitement of going to a house party at someone’s place for the first time. You can design your take-home Dumps pouch, grab a welcome drink, put on a vinyl record, browse the art wall or our reading nook, pick up a game of chess, or use one of our conversation cards to break the ice with someone you're about to spend the next few hours with.”
And it very much is this.
Between billowing plumes of steam, bubbling pots, sizzling pans and a dedicated Dump Bar where you can freestyle the fillings to your heart’s content, I witnessed a Dumps It Yourself dumpling-making workshop loosen from a handful of polite introductions into a kind of round-table discourse over a communal feast set up in the middle of the shop, ricocheting between Regena Thomashauer book recs, BTS and the mountain pressures facing Sydney’s hospo industry.
“The conversation cards were actually Ben’s idea, he’s a therapist and part of his work is helping people build more connected relationships,” Dee mentions.
“He talks a lot about how important it is to feel seen and heard, and how bringing curiosity and openness into conversation can make people feel safer and more connected. We’ve even asked each other some of the deeper questions too, and despite so many years together, we still learn new things about each other and ourselves!”
Hours later, we were still sitting around the table, digging into a chocolate pu’er tart by Roger Sam who splits his time between serving tea at Potts Point tea bar Ms Cattea and shaping dough at AP Bread. Dee says dessert at Dumps It Yourself will rotate through friends and local creatives keen to get their sweet things out into the world, much less a side detail than a neat distillation of what Dumps World is trying to do more broadly—create a safe space for other people’s creativity.
Because, that aforementioned art wall? It’s actually a gallery of work you can buy, supplied by close friends and local makers, a mix of Covid hobbies turned creative practices and side hustles spanning 3D- printed art, chrome books on funghi, wooden sculptures and chessboards, all with their own little stories.
“Championing creativity is why we created Dumps World in the first place,” Dee tells me.
“Bringing other local makers into our shop was always going to be part of it. I don’t want everything that happens here to just be about what we make. I want it to be a little platform for other people to put their ideas out there too, and hopefully inspire someone else to do the same.”
By the time the Glebe dumpling-making workshop wraps, it’s been three-and-a-half-hours.
My camera roll is now stacked with close-ups of flour-dusted pleats, glossy dumpling skins and crimped edges. I've got a pack of my own frozen bundles tucked under my arm, and I'm leaving with a few new friendly faces added on the ‘gram.
It’s been part cooking class, part long lunch, part very good hang. Not bad at all.
Dumps It Yourself: is a three-hour dumpling folding workshop that runs at Dumps World in Glebe. You'll DIY fillings at the Dump Bar, learn four to five styles of folding dumplings, have a dumpling cooking lesson with two methods (pan-fry with crispy skirt and the perfect boil), sit down for a communal feast with sides, score a personalised take-home pack of your frozen dumplings and have access to unlimited non-alc beverages (free BYO).
Image credit: Supplied