by TM Petaccia

The Dumpling Lady’s new location on West Tremont Avenue is expected to open by mid-September. TM Petaccia/UP

Editor’s Note: The Dumpling Lady / South End will open for business Wednesday, September 27.

It took a little longer than expected, but landing a prime South End location finally became a reality for The Dumpling Lady Qian Zhang and her husband John Nisbet. When Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit on 327 West Tremont Ave. closed, the couple were quick to act.

“We’ve been looking to expand for some time,” Nisbet says. “When the biscuit restaurant closed, a broker we had been working with for years called and said, ‘There’s potentially a spot.’ Our thought was instead of starting fresh, we can take a second-generation restaurant space, and it will be easier to turn it around. Turns out that it wasn’t really the case.”

Despite a few delays, Zhang and Nisbet are in the final weeks of the build-out. If all goes to plan and final inspections are timely, the couple plan to open The Dumpling Lady in South End in mid-September. The new spot will allow Zhang to expose Charlotteans to the dishes of her hometown of Sichuan, China.

“We’ll have our noodles and dumpling dishes, but we’ll have five traditional Sichuan dishes, and maybe one or two seasonal dishes that we’ll rotate on and off the menu,” she says.

Two of the new dishes will be twice-cooked pork belly and chili chicken, “a chicken literally buried in dry spices,” Zhang says. Three of the five are vegan-friendly, including the signature Sichuan dish mapo tofu as well as green beans with mustard — and “fish-flavored” eggplant.

“The reason it is called fish-flavored eggplant is because it uses the sauce we use to cook fish,” Zhang says. “My hometown is inland, and we don’t have that much fish available. So we use vegetables.” Those five dishes will always be on the menu.”

The noodle dishes will be mostly similar to what’s available at Optimist Hall, but whereas the dumplings are steamed at Optimist Hall, they will be pan-fried at the South End location.

Qian Zhang and John Nisbet are expanding The Dumpling Lady to South End next month and to Uptown in 2024. TM Petaccia/UP

“I’m very excited about the pan-fry style. It’s a little bit different than what we traditionally would think is pan fry,” she says. “On the bottom, it’s going to be crispy not just on the dumpling itself, but it will be on a base of crispy things. We call it ‘snowflake crispy.'”

All the specialty dishes will be cooked on-site, but as with Optimist Hall, the dumplings and noodles will be made at The Dumpling Lady’s 3,000-square-foot food production facility, which includes a brand-new noodle machine imported from China.

“We were buying noodles locally, but there were some consistency issues,” Zhang says. “This allows us to make our own noodles with our own recipe.” In addition to the standard Dumpling Lady noodle dishes, she will be making special wide “belt noodles” for another new item, cumin beef noodles, in South End.

Dish prices will be in the $5-$15 range, despite sourcing high-end ingredients, such as Springer Mountain chicken, Duroc pork, and wild-caught shrimp. “I think of ourselves as high-quality street food, so I want also the price to be accessible to the majority of the people.”

The South End location is essentially designed for takeout, including a walk-up takeout window, but the restaurant will offer limited fast-casual seating and a few standing tables.

Aside from the final construction, everything else is ready to go. “The good news is we have most of our staff already,” Nisbet says. “We’ve been training since January,” Zhang says. “Every week, we will have them cooking all the dishes to make sure it’s as close to what I would taste at home.”

This is the latest step in the evolution of The Dumpling Lady. Zhang and Nisbet started by selling frozen dumplings in 2015 at the old Atherton Market (now South End Farmers Market) and the NoDa Farmers Market (no longer active). That led to a very successful food truck business which in turn led to being one of the inaugural tenants at Optimist Hall. South End is just part of the expansion plans. An Uptown location inside The Alley at Latta Arcade is slated for 2024.

“I feel like we now have more room right now to create things we really wanted to do,” Zhang says.