Vanessa’s Dumpling House is a family run business. It started in 1999 when Vanessa opened up on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side, selling her first batch of dumplings with attentive detail to quality and adherence to centuries of tradition passed down from her parents and grandparents. Vanessa recalls back home in Beijing, China, when friends and family would come together to make dumplings to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Like Vanessa, dumplings have settled in New York and have since become a welcomed delicious and inexpensive convenience food loved by all. Using daily fresh ingredients Vanessa makes all her own sesame pancake breads, fillings, noodles, soups, salads and sauces many times each day. Sesame pancakes were breakfast breads sold by street vendors in Northern China and were usually accompanied by hot soup. Adding an innovative twist, Vanessa makes these traditional pancakes into a sandwich featuring everything from roast pork, beef, veggies, tofu, tuna and Peking duck sandwiches. The noodles are all handmade. They are paired with broths or sauces and dressed with traditional and non-traditional toppings. Not everything at Vanessa’s has its foundation in tradition. Look for seasonal special dumplings such as pumpkin and zucchini; lamb and squash; spicy beef and banana, that reflect Vanessa’s creativity as well as the diversity of New York. Today, from what was a hole in the wall on the Lower East Side thirteen years ago, the name Vanessa’s is recognized by New Yorkers – students, artists and families, international travelers, NY businesses and caterers, as she shares her recipes with hundreds of people daily.