Dumpling Daughter

Years ago - make that decades ago - there was a wonderful Chinese restaurant on the top of Beacon Hill that I frequented. If I've got my nearly 50 year recall right - and I'm pretty sure I do -  it was called the Great Wall. And if I've got my nearly 50 year recall right - and I'm pretty sure I do - it was run by Sally Ling and her family. 

And part of that family (although they weren't running the restaurant) was her kids, who were often there. There was a very sturdy little boy - maybe her son, maybe her nephew - who I picked up once, and it felt like lifting an anvil. And there was an adorable China-doll little girl, Sally's daughter (maybe three or four years old), who would come around with an order pad and pretend she was taking an order. 

Sally Ling, in the mid-1980's, went on to open the eponymous Sally Ling's, which may have been first "fine dining" Chinese restaurant in Boston. 

The Great Wall had closed, and we quickly switched allegiance to Sally Ling's, which was fabulous. There was one especially wondrous dish, some sort of noodle appetizer in a dark sauce. I can still taste it!

One thing we missed about Sally Ling's was that Sally Ling's kids weren't around, as they had been when she ran the Great Wall. They were, of course, growing up, no doubt staying home to do homework, etc. 

Turns out that little China doll grew up to be a restauranteur herself. Nadia Liu Spellman is the CEO of Dumpling Daughter.

I can't believe I'm just learning about her now, as she opened her first storefront in 2014, and now runs a mini-empire of informal restaurants and grocery store and online product sales. In 2023, she did over $4M in business.

But better late than never.

Sally Ling's was a white-tablecloth restaurant, and Nadia Liu Spellman deliberately chose a different route:

Dumpling Daughter is intentionally less glamorous than Sally Ling’s. Liu Spellman modeled it after her father’s advice. He [Edward Nan Liu] told her if she entered the food industry, she shouldn’t “open a high-end restaurant. [Instead] make a business model where you can sell a lot, but you don’t always have to be there,” Liu Spellman, 41, tells CNBC Make It. (Source: Boston Globe)

Before she got into the food-biz - which her parents had advised her against - Liu Spellman graduated from Babson College and spent a few years in finance in NYC. And while she was there, she realized that she'd rather cook than play with numbers. 

“As you get older, you think about [the] highlight moments of your childhood, and in a way, I really wanted to relive those moments,” Liu Spellman says. “I also wanted to pay respect to my parents’ [legacy].”

By the time Liu Spellman decided she wanted to do food, Sally Ling's in Boston had closed and had re-lo'd to Fort Lee, NJ. Liu Spellman became Sally Ling's GM "and used her observations to develop a 'quick service' restaurant business plan."

She decided to put this business plan into action in Boston. Actually, in suburban Weston, where she opened her first Dumpling Daughter. Her second was opened a few years later. 

There was a hiccup. Two former employees decided to open their own version of Dumpling Daughter, cleverly calling it Dumpling Girl. Liu Spellman sued them and "the competitors quickly asked to settle."

During covid, Liu Spellman started selling boxes of frozen dumplings direct to consumers. That business has expanded, and Dumpling Daughter now sells her dumplings and other products online and East Coast and Midwest grocery stores. One of those products is her "special brown sugar and chili oil dipping sauce," which sounds quite a bit like the sauce-that-I-can-still-taste on those scrumptious tiny dumplings I used to mow down at Sally Ling's.

Dumpling Daughter is still not profitable, but I'm going to do my bit to help. "My" grocery store, Roche Brothers, sells Liu Spellman's products, and I'll be on the lookout, once I free up some room in my freezer (currently over-stocked with Christmas cookies). If I can't wait for that to happen, I'll wait for a fine winter's day and stroll over to the Dumpling Daughter in South Boston.

I know that part of Nadia Liu Spellman's model is that she "doesn't always have to be there," but I'll be hoping I run into her and ask her whether she remembers taking orders at the Great Wall.