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Sister Liu’s Kitchen

5504 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., #103, Durham

984-244-3973 | sisterliuskitchen.com

par excellence—at least in our country’s semi-urban badlands—often culminates in the most godforsaken places imaginable. There’s an inverse correlation between great ones and faceless strip-mall digs. You’re on the right track if the space is a gauntlet of industrial cooking and food-storage equipment. So much the better if the sole decoration is, like, a picture of a palm tree. And if there’s absolutely nowhere to sit yet a line snaking out the door, then you’ve probably found the best dumplings in town.

Sister Liu’s Kitchen is a perfect example of this dichotomy, cloistered in a tiny space next to eight lanes of Fury Road-style traffic in the former Straw Valley compound, Durham’s labyrinthine retail and dining venue. And while other, prettier restaurants around town serve good dumplings, Sister Liu’s are undeniably the best.

Cuiying Liu arrived in Durham in 2013 from Harbin, a city in China’s northeast known for bone-chilling cold, exquisite works of ice sculpture, and soulful cuisine. Liu started cooking for friends and family, but her dumplings quickly garnered a hardcore following among local students. She opened her namesake kitchen in 2018, and within a few months, it landed on Bon Appétit’s list of the 50 Best New Restaurants in America, a fairly astounding accomplishment for a take-out-only dive that is, at best, mildly difficult to find.

So what’s the secret? What makes a dumpling great, as opposed to good, as opposed to merely OK?

For one, the wrapper is a vital component, and the wrappers at Sister Liu’s are delightfully slippery, paper-thin but with enough density and chew to manifest their own tactile appeal.

And a dumpling must be juicy; Sister Liu’s are profoundly so, the filling in each sealed wrapper brewing its own tiny thimbleful of ambrosial broth during the steaming process. They don’t explode on the tongue so much as squish in a feat of textural synesthesia. These dumplings feel delicious.

Finally, to truly qualify for greatness, a dumpling with one filling must be immediately and strikingly distinguishable from one with a different filling. This might seem obvious, but cross-variety dumpling contrast is frustratingly tricky to guarantee, especially for customers who eat their dumplings at peak toothsomeness, which is to say, screamingly hot. Unimaginative seasoning or over-reliance on MSG can make an order of pork and chive dumplings taste exactly the same as an accompanying order of, say, beef and celery.

This is not a problem at Sister Liu’s, with its shuffling menu of fillings and preparations. Lamb and carrot dumplings taste earthy and gamey, with a streak of root-vegetable sweetness. Beef and onion dumplings are milder, silky, and fatty. Vegan dumplings—filled with tofu and cabbage or mushroom, cabbage, and herbs—have enticing vegetal richness and complexity.

My favorite are the pork, shrimp, and cabbage dumplings, an ingenious combination of land and sea brightened by pungent cabbage. On a recent visit, I stockpiled an unfair quota of these wondrous little purses and denied a frequent lunch collaborator his fair share. I speculated—not for the first time—that I would probably be OK eating nothing else for the rest of my life.

Photo by Jade Wilson Chinese burger at Sister Liu’s

The dumplings are the main attraction, but Sister Liu’s also serves immensely satisfying hand-held delicacies helpfully referred to as “Chinese Burgers.” After exhaustive research (i.e., five seconds on the internet), I determined these to be an expert take on rou jia mo, a stuffed flatbread originating in the Shaanxi Province. Literally translated as “meat sandwiched in bread,” this regional staple has conquered China and is creeping steadily into the global street food canon.

The rou jia mo at Sister Liu’s is at least as good as the dumplings. The bun—steamed, then griddled—is a culinary paradox, perched between crispiness and puffball softness. Liu slices them along one edge and crams in a ladleful of filling. Recent offerings included a vegan hodgepodge of fried vegetables and pickles and spicy braised pork belly with green peppers and cilantro.

The latter—a Liu family recipe—is a hungry commuter’s dream.

Contact contributing food editor Nick Williams at food@indyweek.com.

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