Ugly Dumpling

All have worked up an appetite for us all here in the Good Day Cafe. Get ready to fold, fill, and feast because we have Ugly Dumpling in the kitchen. Yeah, I'm excited about this. Cesar is with us, as is Crystal right here. And you guys are from the Fair Oaks location, which is obviously in Fairfax County. But let's talk first about ugly dumpling because you guys are growing very quickly with more locations coming to the DMV in Virginia and Maryland, right? Yeah, we are Shanghai Street Food. So we're opening up, you know, three locations every month. Our company is about, you know, 30 restaurants deep. So our company, we're moving fast to get people to the restaurant so they don't have to travel far to go to an Ugly Dumpling. So if you want to go now, go to Fairfax County, go out to Fair Oaks. Yeah, come see me especially. But soon, like you said, you're coming to White Marsh, you're going to be at Virginia Beach, a lot of other locations, Richmond area. So that being said, you know a little bit about the company now. We've got to get into the food. We must, and we're going to get into some dumplings in just a bit first off. But walk us through what you brought here and some of the standouts on the menu. So we actually opened a little over a year ago. And like my manager said, we are a traditional Shanghai restaurant. And we offer a fusion mix of Shanghai street food. And our slogan here is ugly has never looked so good because we're able to mix modern flavors and traditional flavors to make something you've never seen. Right here, we got the rainbow dumplings. Actually, kids are always super excited to see their server bring out the rainbow dumplings. because you really don't see that at other restaurants. But I'll walk you guys through the flavors if you're interested. So the black one right here, we have pork and truffle. It is a little bit of a new taste, but the people who like it really like it. They keep coming back for that flavor. We got the red and white one. It is a little spicy, but it's going to be pork and szechuan. The red one's going to be chicken. We got your traditional pork. We got the green one, the pork, shrimp, and spinach. And then we have the pork and crab, which is the yellow one at the bottom. I love it. It's a great sampler for everything there, whether for the table or just for you if you want to sample the different dumplings. All right, before we get to this end of the table, let's go down there and kind of walk us through what we have as far as some options. Oh, yes. I am super excited. This is actually my favorite appetizer because of the sauce it comes with. The egg rolls. Oh, yeah. So it comes with the cabbage, it's got corn in there, and then you can dip it in this little sweet and sour sauce we have here that we offer to our guests. And then just because the cold season is coming up, we did bring our braised beef noodle soup. It's super good for the cold weather, something nice and hot. Then going to come over here to our most popular entree, our Mongolian beef. Comes with peppers, onions, mixed vegetables, and then we got our orange chicken right here. Comes with a side of white rice, which we have on this side. Or if you're feeling a little fancy, you can get a side of fried rice, which can either come with chicken, can come with beef, can come as just a vegetable fried rice as we have right here. As long as it comes to the table. bring it to the table so this is we have the dumplings we have multiple types of dumplings we have the buns we have the traditional foods that are here uh you can't hide the star of the show for me much longer i am a soup dumpling fan of course and you had to bring some in right of course i did have to bring some in bring them on over here because i have questions as well if uh if you've never tried soup dumplings before they're a little bit different because you have all the the joy that you have from a dumpling but you literally have a liquid inside of course So the question has always been, what's the most efficient way? We could say proper way, but everybody has their own technique. The most efficient way to enjoy it so that you get the soup part of it, but you actually get the dumpling part. Because trust me, I've had these things, Marissa, and I've dumped all the soup out before it ended. So, Cesar, I'm going to try something here, which is what I typically do. Marissa, I invite you to try me as well. So what I will typically do is I will gently, and we would probably be using chopsticks, right? I would gently try to take this out of here and then I'll use the chopsticks and I'll like stab it a little bit to try to get some of the liquid out of there. And then once you do that one, Marissa, it cools it down a little bit. But the other thing is then, and forgive me for slurping on TV, but I would then basically drip the soup out of it first. And then once I get the liquid out of it with the spoon, hopefully catching the rest of it, then you pop in the rest of it. Well, normally I just pop it all in at once and that's what you do. That's what I do. I just put it in my mouth. But if you want to get each element right, Cesar, we want to do what Steve just described. You want to slurp all the soup, try all the flavor, then you just pop it in. All right. All right. Sorry. That was very hard. Now I'm about to get started. We literally just had this conversation in the break because if you do take the whole thing. Yep. You're going to see a lot of this going on. A lot of this. As well. So the technique is yours, however you choose to do it. That being said, is this the big seller? what if people our big seller would be the ugly dumpling sampler the one that we yep that one's right over there then when guests come in for the first time we always recommend the ugly dumpling sampler so they can figure out which is going to be their favorite then they order the that exact flavor because we can order the sampler then you can order particular each flavor whatever you'd like it's a great way to do it the other thing i think is really cool is not only is everything made in-house, but you have proof that it's made in-house, right? Right when you walk into the restroom, there's a glass case where the dumpling bao ladies are in there working every single day, all day, with you know bare hands all day. And it's really hard. People might look in there and say, oh, they sit there all day just making that. No. That's like the star of the show. Those are the important people to run that actually restaurant. You said it's almost like a red carpet. Yeah, that's a red carpet. Exactly. You see a lot of flashing, and they'll make the dumplings right in front of you. That's great, but that's what you want to see, right? As a consumer, you want to know that it's fresh, right, and have everything there. So you talked about your favorite. Well, you said that's the favorite when it comes to the starters and the appetizers. What's your favorite on the menu? I have to say my favorite is the Mongolian beef because it's not crazy spicy. My spice tolerance is a little lower than average, but it has, like, a nice kick in there, and it really complements the flavor, too. One thing I was hooked on was the bubble tea, and I know you all had that, too. Yeah. And this is some of it, and then another one here that you brought as well. Yeah, we actually brought our two most popular ones. So we have a green tea, and at the bottom, the rainbow stuff. I promise it is safe, but it has rainbow jelly at the bottom. And then right here, we have our brown sugar boba, which is a mix of milk, the brown sugar boba pearls, and then brown sugar syrup. Want to give it a try? There's the information where you can find it. You guys are in the mall or adjacent to the mall? We are in the mall. It makes it even easier then. Fair Oaks Mall, you know where to find them out in Fairfax. And you can go to the website if you want to check out the whole menu or you want to see pretty food pictures. Go to the social media and you'll find it there. Crystal, see you. Thank you guys. Really appreciate it. Thank you. We'll take a short break and we'll wrap things up right after this.