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Desert Island Dumplings: Is this the best vegan spot in Manchester?
National World - LocalTV
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08/04/2025
We went along to Desert Island Dumplings to talk to owner, Lucy about the business and their plans to shut the Afflecks store later this year despite the extraordinary success of the start-up.
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00:00
Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Cusenbet and today I'm on my way into
00:03
Affleck's Palace to go for lunch at Desert Island Dumplings. Now this place is one that I've only
00:08
been to once before and genuinely what an experience it was. Not only does it do genuinely
00:14
wonderful dumplings but they're all vegan, it's independently owned and the staff are
00:19
absolutely lovely. So we're going to go in, we're just entering Affleck's now, we're going to go
00:23
in, have a chat to the staff, learn a little bit about the story and we'll try some of the food as
00:28
well. I started the business during lockdown, me and my housemate Robbie were having like a late
00:33
night chat. I was telling him how my sister used to do like deep fried dumplings as a hangover cure
00:38
and he never had them deep fried but then we kind of were saying it's a bit rubbish the way
00:43
veggie dumplings are always just like vegetables, it's like mushroom and chive or just like straight
00:48
assortment of veg and we were like wouldn't it be cool you could have like veggie flavours like
00:53
cheeseburger and then it was like like normal. The next day we had like a cheeseburger dumpling
00:59
cook-off and then that kind of just got the ball rolling, we were like these are really good and
01:02
it just kind of became this thing of like we're making something that you can't get but it's
01:07
really good. So I like whacked it on Instagram, my little sister made us a logo, suddenly we were
01:14
like whizzing around Liverpool city centre on our bikes dropping them at random people's houses.
01:19
Well I was working for Denise who runs the gluten-free pie company in Liverpool and she's amazing and
01:26
she's like working class, she's from Kerby and she like was gluten-free and started this pie
01:31
business because she couldn't get good gluten-free pies so she was kind of like my mentor. I'd been
01:37
athletes only one time before I fell into maybe the misguided crowd that thought it was just like
01:45
a place for like teenage gums and you know a place to get your ears pierced but then when I arrived here
01:52
and I saw the eclectic mix of traders and all the stuff that's going on the building and I've like
01:58
seen that it is totally more than I suppose I like initially thought. A place like Athlex which is so
02:05
like LGBTQ friendly is you know being actually a really sweet place to open for us. Despite the popularity of
02:12
Desert Island Dumplings it was announced earlier this year that they'll be closing the store in around
02:16
June and here's why. The simple reason is that like I haven't had more than four days off in a row
02:24
in like three years so yeah the idea is just to take a beat and I'm moving to Edinburgh I'm going to
02:32
bring the dumplings to the Scots. The business isn't closing it's just evolving I think is my answer.
02:40
So as I go to take the last dumpling from this dumpling roulette I could take solace in the
02:45
fact that this won't be my last Desert Island Dumpling ever. I've got confidence that even if
02:50
they're not here in Manchester for much longer they'll be around for a long long time.
02:57
So that's all for now follow Manchester World for more.
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