Photos by Caitlin Abrams
man rolling out dough
Peter Bian rolls his family-recipe dumplings at Bull’s Horn.
During the first week in my new house, I couldn’t find a utensil or pan for the life of me. Boxes were everywhere, many labeled “Kitchen,” but nary a fork in sight. After the third night of pizza and takeout, I successfully spelunked and found a pot. It was a Wednesday, and the first thing I cooked in my new kitchen? A bag of brisket, carrot, and Szechuan peppercorn dumplings from Saturday Dumpling Club. It felt appropriate for new beginnings.
Peter Bian, the man behind the dumplings, was like many of us during the pandemic: at a loss. Before COVID hit, Bian had exited the health care world after selling the MRI company he helped create in 2018. Getting out was the goal, but then what? “We were just grinding back then; there was no time for vacation, no time for anything,” Bian told me. “So in 2019, my wife Linda [Cao] and I just dropped everything and traveled, seeing friends for weddings, going to Italy and Thailand, Cambodia, and Japan.” They looked to 2020 as the year they’d figure it all out and maybe try to do something in food. But when lockdown hit, all ideas fell flat. So they started cooking.
“At first it was just us in our tiny kitchen making sushi and meal kits for the friends in our iso pod,” he said. “Then, we were in Milwaukee with my brother and parents, and we started making dumplings for Chinese New Year. And we were thinking, There’s no good northern-style dumplings around—that’s where I’m from, like close to Beijing. We thought people might really like good, handmade-from-scratch dumplings, because the dough is everything.” So what did they do? They put their dumplings on the internet to see what would happen.
At the time, Bian had some 300 followers on Instagram, and he thought, “What’s the harm? We’ll see if people will pay for it; maybe we’ll get feedback.” Cao came up with the name Saturday Dumpling Club because it sounded like a fun place people would want to join. And boy, did they. Their idea jumped off, and they suddenly found themselves not just selling dumplings but selling out of dumplings.
“It was really incredible to see,” Bian laughed. “We didn’t really know anyone in the food world, but we made a few connections, like Paul [@bothrops1] and Erik [@easyandcompany]. They helped push it out a little bit, and it just grew organically. Now it’s a full-time job.”
Saturday Dumpling Club posts the week’s menu Wednesday mornings at 10 am on its new website. Sometimes, it’s sold out in two minutes. You pick up your order of dumplings, which come frozen and ready to reheat. Instructions on preparing them are on the website. It’s still a two-person operation, with Bian as the main cook and Cao subbing in when needed. They work out of the Bull’s Horn kitchen. Doug Flicker followed their dumpling account, so they reached out and worked out a deal to use the kitchen when the bar was closed. This is not a Cottage Law business; the operation is fully licensed.
Saturday Dumpling Club continually sells out of all the orders Bian and Cao can make, and the duo has incredible buzz among foodists, so I had to ask if they were planning on opening a restaurant. “Well, I’m at this point where it’s kind of like a crossroads,” Bian admitted. “I could go one way or another. We’re testing out a couple of pop-ups here and there this summer because it’d be nice to do a couple of cooked-dumplings demos. But I’m not sure about a restaurant.”
bag of dumpling dough
Bian has been around long enough—and gone through plenty of his own business dealings with investors—to know that owning a restaurant is not just glamour and good times. “We kind of saw the underbelly of the business this year, and there are some really rough things about it. If we did do something, it would be small: I mean no tables in there, just counters and a patio, maybe something like that.” Make no mistake: Bian has been shopped by investors who want to be involved in growing the dumpling company. This just isn’t his first rodeo.
The main expansion they are thinking about involves growing the menu. “I want to introduce more of my childhood street food, like steamed buns,” he said. “Food that comes from my family’s traditions, the good stuff we make on weekends when we’re all together.” To do that, he needs to find more help to make more dumplings, and help is hard to come by for everyone these days. Cao still has her day job, so she can only help out on big orders when she has time. But since they now have close to 5,000 followers on Instagram (as of press time), she’s needed quite a bit.
Suddenly, the Saturday Dumpling Club is requiring Bian to work long hours to create 300 to 400 packs a week—making the dough, chopping the ingredients, mixing the filling, assembling. “I just start making them Sunday through Thursday, and then Friday I make sauce,” he said. “So yeah, it’s like more than a full-time job. But no matter what, this is 100 times better than health care.”
