First Look: A Mother-Daughter Duo Fold 1000 Dumplings a Day at Carlton’s Aunty’s Dumplings

The calluses on Joris Zhao’s index fingers started forming about five months ago, just after opening a small dumpling shop with her parents. They’re the result of helping her mum fold and seal 1000 dumplings a day, six days a week, at Aunty’s Dumplings on Cardigan Street, Carlton.

The inconspicuous restaurant is run by Joris, her mother Guixia Li (or Aunty Li) and Joris’s father Hua Zhao. Joris manages the floor, while Guixia is in charge of all the food, which includes eight mainstay and some seasonal dumplings, as well as smaller dishes such as cabbage and carrot pickles, and Dongbei jelly – tofu topped with a savoury jelly that has pieces of century egg and pork set into it. 

Guixia makes all the fillings, and both she and her daughter roll dough and fill dumpling wrappers. They currently don’t have any employees, though they have some help from Hua. “He’s not good at cooking. He’s not good even at cutting. But he’s good at washing,” Joris says.

All the dumplings on offer are freshly made each day – on the rare occasion they don't sell out, the family enjoys the remaining ones for lunch or dinner – and Guixia is adamant about using fresh produce, seafood and meat from the nearby Queen Vic Market. “She goes every day the market is open,” says Joris. The matriarch and chef wants to feel, see, touch and smell all of the produce so she can guarantee quality. Joris, attempting to give her mum a break, has tried shopping on her behalf. Once, she returned with chives that her mother deemed too old. Another time, they were too thick.

Most of the fillings harken back to the food the family ate in their hometown of Jinzhou, a coastal city in the Liaoning province in China’s northeast. Sauerkraut and pork dumplings are often on the menu, as are the pork, chive and prawn ones. But Guixia especially excels at making seafood dumplings, some filled with mackerel and others with black squid – when she can find it at the market. “When we can buy it, we will have it,” says Joris. 

Back in China, Joris says her mother was known for her cooking and would prepare meals for weekly gatherings and festivals such as Chinese New Year. She and her husband moved to Melbourne in 2023 to join their daughter who moved to Australia in 2010 to study. The move brought the family together, but removed Joris’s parents from their community and routine. 

“In China, they have family, they have friends and they can do everything [themselves]. But in Australia, they just have me. They don’t have friends and they need to restart their lives,” says Joris. “And if they don’t have friends and they don’t have hobbies like they do in China, they will focus on me.”

Aunty’s Dumplings
117 Cardigan Street, Carlton
No phone

Hours:
Wed to Mon midday–8.30pm

@auntysdumplings