How Henry Hsu Learned to Make Dumplings

Henry Hsu gathered everyone who helped with the Péng Yǒu Chinese Breakfast Pop-up at Joodooboo for this selfie: From left are Wendy Chew, Alice Tsui, Rochelle Bunyapanasarn, Eric Chow (Astranda Bakery), Nancy Lui (Laulaumeow), Jessica Fu, and Lena Thaler. Right: Hsu shares his dumpling expertise at Preserved workshops (photo by naomiq).

Oakland based food artisan, teacher, and storyteller Henry Hsu (@eatoramasama) describes his past identities as public health worker, architect, and designer, but food was also a great passion, so he took on a job with Oakland tofu maker Hodo Foods.

Like many living in the vast Chinese diaspora, Hsu understood that his Taiwanese heritage was also shaped by his upbringing. He grew up on the Gulf Coast and went to the Midwest for his education. It was during his time living in Ecuador, where he found Asian pantry items hard to come by, that he taught himself how to make dumplings from scratch. Hsu now teaches others how to make his cold-water dumpling dough and stuff it with various fillings like a classic pork and cabbage filling made with a sweet Taiwanese flat cabbage, and a roasted veggie filling at workshops like this one coming up on Tuesday, January 14 at Preserved in Oakland. (If you find that class is sold out, check the February schedule.)

Henry Hsu’s interest in his food heritage also took him to his first formal cooking job. At the Dumpling Club in San Francisco, he worked with culinary director Nancy Lui (@LauLauMeow), who grew up in Sydney, Australia, in the back of her family’s Cantonese restaurant. Drawing on those family memories, Lui started a Chinese breakfast pop-up at the Dumpling Club, enlisting help from Hsu and two other friends who were working there: former Tartine baker Eric Chow (who founded and now runs San Francisco’s Astranda Bakery) and Jessica Fu (@Jessica Little Fu), an Oakland-based pastry chef and teacher who has been exploring her Asian heritage and California upbringing through the art of pastry.

“When the Dumpling Club closed its doors at the end of 2023, we did not want our making food together to end,” says Lui. The four friends created Péng Yǒu, a series of Chinese breakfast pop-ups that they hold about once per season at Joodooboo, the popular shop at 4201 Market Street in Oakland where Korean-American Steve Joo makes dooboo (tofu) and banchan with hyper-seasonal produce.

“Péng Yǒu means ‘friends’ in Chinese,” Hsu says. “We all are exploring our Chinese food identity. I’ve learned that cultural identity in food is simply not as monolithic and neatly squared away as we’d all like it to be.”