I Picked Up My Life and Moved Just to Be Closer to This Brooklyn Dumpling Spot

This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to our very opinionated editors’ favorite things to eat, drink, and buy.

Milling around at a tofu event (what lives we lead at BA!) years ago, I was blown away by chef Chris Cheung’s tofu-stuffed bao, a rare moment of true eye-widening deliciousness. He mentioned he had a small restaurant, East Wind Snack Shop in Windsor Terrace, a few subway stops north from where I lived at the time in Brooklyn. Just weeks later, I found myself sitting down to dry-aged beef potstickers and Happy Buddha vegetables.

East Wind is a dollhouse-size restaurant on a quiet residential block. The kitchen is really just a series of induction burners and a minuscule prep counter, with all the cooking happening in plain sight. Videos of Cheung making dumplings on TV series like “The Martha Stewart Show” play on a monitor on the wall, and seating is limited to a few small tables and tight counters with wooden stools. Yet, there are few places more welcoming and friendly in all of Brooklyn.

East Wind Snack Shop is my home away from home.
East Wind Snack Shop is my home away from home.

Despite what appears to be a carb-heavy menu centered on dumplings and noodle dishes, the food stays light, thanks to crunchy, fresh vegetables and balanced flavors throughout. Pan-fried noodles have just enough salty-sweet dressing. The Happy Buddha vegetables are uniformly crisp-tender, bite-size sections of blanched long beans, delightfully tiny baby bok choy, water spinach, king oyster mushrooms, and mung bean sprouts, all drizzled with a gingery scallion, cilantro, and lemon puree and topped with fried garlic and sesame seeds. The briny-sweet shrimp filling in the har gow nearly explodes with juiciness. Even the deeply beefy potstickers manage to feel restrained with exceptionally thin, blistered handmade dough wrappers.

After that first visit, years went by (and Cheung opened up three more outposts of East Wind in Brooklyn). Then one year ago, my family moved to the same neighborhood as the original shop. It was a hellacious journey through the Brooklyn real estate market, but once we found our place and the movers departed, we celebrated with a trip to East Wind. Adrenaline-spent and ravenous, I looked down at my table full of gorgeous stir-fried vegetables, plump dumplings, and pork belly bao, and knew: I was home.

Go there: East Wind Snack Shop

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit