Desert Island Dumplings: Is this the best vegan spot in Manchester?

National World - LocalTV

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.

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Cusenbet and today I'm on my way into

00:03Affleck's Palace to go for lunch at Desert Island Dumplings. Now this place is one that I've only

00:08been to once before and genuinely what an experience it was. Not only does it do genuinely

00:14wonderful dumplings but they're all vegan, it's independently owned and the staff are

00:19absolutely lovely. So we're going to go in, we're just entering Affleck's now, we're going to go

00:23in, have a chat to the staff, learn a little bit about the story and we'll try some of the food as

00:28well. I started the business during lockdown, me and my housemate Robbie were having like a late

00:33night chat. I was telling him how my sister used to do like deep fried dumplings as a hangover cure

00:38and he never had them deep fried but then we kind of were saying it's a bit rubbish the way

00:43veggie dumplings are always just like vegetables, it's like mushroom and chive or just like straight

00:48assortment of veg and we were like wouldn't it be cool you could have like veggie flavours like

00:53cheeseburger and then it was like like normal. The next day we had like a cheeseburger dumpling

00:59cook-off and then that kind of just got the ball rolling, we were like these are really good and

01:02it just kind of became this thing of like we're making something that you can't get but it's

01:07really good. So I like whacked it on Instagram, my little sister made us a logo, suddenly we were

01:14like whizzing around Liverpool city centre on our bikes dropping them at random people's houses.

01:19Well I was working for Denise who runs the gluten-free pie company in Liverpool and she's amazing and

01:26she's like working class, she's from Kerby and she like was gluten-free and started this pie

01:31business because she couldn't get good gluten-free pies so she was kind of like my mentor. I'd been

01:37athletes only one time before I fell into maybe the misguided crowd that thought it was just like

01:45a place for like teenage gums and you know a place to get your ears pierced but then when I arrived here

01:52and I saw the eclectic mix of traders and all the stuff that's going on the building and I've like

01:58seen that it is totally more than I suppose I like initially thought. A place like Athlex which is so

02:05like LGBTQ friendly is you know being actually a really sweet place to open for us. Despite the popularity of

02:12Desert Island Dumplings it was announced earlier this year that they'll be closing the store in around

02:16June and here's why. The simple reason is that like I haven't had more than four days off in a row

02:24in like three years so yeah the idea is just to take a beat and I'm moving to Edinburgh I'm going to

02:32bring the dumplings to the Scots. The business isn't closing it's just evolving I think is my answer.

02:40So as I go to take the last dumpling from this dumpling roulette I could take solace in the

02:45fact that this won't be my last Desert Island Dumpling ever. I've got confidence that even if

02:50they're not here in Manchester for much longer they'll be around for a long long time.

02:57So that's all for now follow Manchester World for more.

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