Brunch Buds: We Went to Dumpling Eatery to (What Else?) Eat Dumplings

If you've been craving great soup dumplings and/or a bathroom with a Robot Trashcan, have we got the place for you.

2:55 PM CDT on August 24, 2026

All photos by Andy Sturdevant

Keith Harris and Andy Sturdevant have been meeting for brunch on Saturday mornings for over a decade. The tradition began when they pledged to work out at the Midtown YWCA every weekend, and decided they deserved a reward after that. Somehow, the workout portion of this arrangement fell by the wayside. But they kept eating, and have probably hit about 30 new restaurants a year since then. And yet, despite each man’s savvy business sense, they have never turned their friendship ritual into salable content. Until now. Welcome to Brunch Buds.

It's been a long time. We shouldn't have left you without a Brunch Buds to step to. Yes, Brunch Buds still exists/exist, even though Andy and Keith have been lazy about recounting their adventures here. Somehow it's been nearly a year since the last column! So let's get the proverbial train proverbially back on the proverbial track with an afternoon of dumplings.

Brunch Date 8.15.26: Dumpling Eatery

Keith: So, Andy, there has not been a brunch buds now for some time…

Andy: No, there sure hasn't. Not publicly, at least. I guess you might say it's been on background. Like, we're still going out for brunch. Just not documenting it.

Keith: Yes, we've kept doing the easy part—eating.

Andy: What makes a Brunch Buds, and what is just brunch buds?

Keith: The eternal question. Sometimes buds just brunch without feeling the need to broadcast it to the world.

Andy: Right. In fact, sometimes we'll be in the middle of a brunch, bud, and we are both overcome with a feeling that, suddenly, and without warning, it's become a Brunch Buds.

Which is, I think, what was going on last week.

Keith: That's my recollection too. We were in the newish Dumpling Eatery on 27th and Nicollet, commonly known as "Eat Street." (I've already gone through my whole spiel about that.) And a Brunch Buds was born.

Andy: A Brunch Buds restaurant has several key features that must all be present: (1) fairly known to both neighborhood residents and discerning readers, but not recently covered in great detail; (2) weekend "vibes" (I don't love that word, but sometimes it's useful shorthand); and (3) there is enough there, in terms of food, decor, service, etc. to keep the attention of all members of our multigenerational cohort. And Dumpling Eatery meets all three criteria.

Keith: Now Andy, you know I'm something of a dumpling expert…

Not really, of course, but I did once eat a wide variety of them in one weekend. That has to count for something

Andy: You are at the bare minimum a dumpling aficionado. A step above an enthusiast or dabbler.

Keith: I like the sound of "dumpling dabbler" though.

Andy: There's no shame in amateurism.

Keith: From what I gather, soup dumplings are in short supply in the Twin Cities, or to use the proper term Xiaolongbao.

Andy: This is also my understanding, though I defer to the dumpling dabbler.

Keith: RIP Szechuan Spice on Lyndale, which is the last place in Minneapolis I had them.

I wish we were on video so there could be a large NOT A DUMPLING EXPERT chyron underneath me whenever I speak.

Andy: We just have to paint the image in the reader's mind. Create a mental chyron.

Keith: *Michael Stipe voice* cre-ate a mental chyron

Andy: I never ate at Szechuan Spice, unfortunately. That was one of those places I walked past a hundred times and never went in, for whatever reason. But they had a great reputation, right?

Keith: They did, I think. But they were also indistinguishable from the outside from any other Chinese restaurant.

But Dumpling Eatery is, as its name suggests, pretty focused on dumplings.

Andy: Focused, like a beautiful red, yellow, or green laser.

Which is my ingenious writerly way of segueing into a discussion of the spectacular, jewel-like colors of the dumplings in question.

Keith: They really were gorgeous, as was the black dumpling, dyed with squid ink.

Also with properly thin wrappers. (I was commending another popular dumpling joint in town recently and some bona fide dumpling knowers pooh-poohed the thick doughy wrappers. I hung my dabbling head in shame.)

Andy: And if anyone had any doubts about the process that went into making these dumplings, there was a window into the kitchen where you could see the chefs preparing the dumplings, rolling them out and putting in the fillings and twisting the ends.

Keith: I don't think I could work with people gawking at me like that, but I am not a dumpling maker (as we've established, I'm barely a dumpling knower).

Andy: I agree, it'd be tough, but there was a really sweet '70s Sesame Street/Mr. Rogers quality to it. "How are dumplings made? Let's roll the film." Redacto, my kid, seemed to enjoy seeing the process up-close.

There's such an interest in open kitchen designs. I don't ever remember seeing the inside of a kitchen from the diner side before a few years ago, but maybe I was going to the wrong restaurants. I guess that's a part of the landscape now. That is an expectation Redacto will have in the future—you go to restaurants to see your food being made!

Keith: Definitely as a kid, the kitchen was a sealed off place from which people emerged with your food.

Is there no mystery left in the world?

We should say, because we haven't yet, that the dumplings were, in our inexpert opinion, excellent.

Andy: Oh, right! That's an important detail. Yes, a full endorsement of Dumpling Eatery and their dumplings. It's helpful to get some guidance on what to order, so we just ordered the sampler dumplings ($17.95), which selected five of the most popular and put them together in one bamboo steamer.

We divvied them up by colors.

Keith: One thing about me is, I'm always going for the sampler. I'm indecisive, fear commitment, and for some reason eat as though I will never get a chance to select another meal.

But yes, pork, chicken, beef, shrimp... all excellent, with that little dollop of broth on top

We also had some appetizers: Some edamame ($6.95), standout cream cheese wontons ($8.95), and some pork ear wonderfully seasoned in chili oil ($11.95), though I always forget I don't need to eat as much of the chewy part of an animal as I think I do.

Andy: I took the remainder of the pig ear home and enjoyed it that night. It saved well.

And yeah, the cream cheese wontons were great. I think from the perspective of 2026 the cream cheese wonton is unquestionably Minnesota's greatest contribution to global cuisine. These were particularly good—I don't want to make too big a deal about this in case these were merely from a really good specialty wholesaler, but the wontons seemed particularly hand-made. They had a very pleasing shape.

Keith: I just want to step aside for a moment and talk about what a nice little day I had that Saturday. I woke up, biked to the library, saw Cinema Ecclesia's screening of Hiroshima Mon Amour, went to brunch, then returned to my neighborhood for Porch Fest. Only in Minneapolis!

Andy: That is a really good Minneapolis summer Saturday. Like a porch, it's partially indoors and partially outdoors. And the dumplings in the middle are the keystone in the triumphal arch of weekend activities.

I forget what I did afterwards but it probably involved Legos.

Keith: We should probably mention that the Dumpling Eatery bathroom has a Trash-Eating Robot that distracted one of our party.

Andy: Yeah, you want to encourage your kid to be curious and explore the world, although one's patience is tested sometimes. It was one of those trashcans that you wave your hand over and it opens its robot mouth.

And of course I too was distracted because the music in the bathroom was so pleasant and enjoyable—it sounded exactly like something on the NTS "Slow Focus" channel—that I was waving my phone up around the speaker to try to Shazam it, and it couldn't identify it. And of course some guy walks in as Redacto is waving his hands over the Trash Robot and I am waving my phone in the air.

Good thing Dumpling Eatery is a family-friendly establishment.

Keith: They even distracted Redacto from his distraction by providing him with a little yellow dumpling toy.

Andy: That was the sweetest part. They know their audience! Even though Redacto claims to not like dumplings—clearly reflecting my failure as a parent—he does love dumpling toys. It was a little squeeze-y dumpling in a plastic bamboo steamer; it said "do not eat" on the packaging, and indeed we didn't eat it. But again, you have to love a restaurant that has a box of little dumpling toys ready to distribute as needed.

The giant dumpling statue was a highlight, too. One of those depictions of a sentient foodstuff where its relationship to other nearby foodstuffs is unclear. The big one is clearly making dumplings, but it's not clear if the two dumplings at its feet are dumplings it made, or just like nephews or nieces or helpers or something.

Keith: And will the dumplings be sacrificed to us? Or will the big one consume them itself? Again, so many questions.

Andy: I feel like generally in this space we ought to talk about the food more often in this, but really, the quality of the bathrooms and the giveaways for kids and the artwork on display is equally or maybe even more important than just the food!

Otherwise, we could just get takeout and eat everything at home, you know? The real sampler platter was the dumpling sculptures and the Robot Trashcans we met along the way.