Ugly Dumpling, Phenix Salon Suites plan New Hyde Park locations

Dumplings and glam are headed to a New Hyde Park shopping center this year.

Ugly Dumpling, a Chinese soup dumpling eatery, and Phenix Salon Suites, which are private spaces for independent cosmetology and other appearance-based professionals, have signed leases to open locations in the Lake Success Shopping Center, according to representatives for the chains.

Ugly Dumpling, which has 12 restaurants in New York and five other East Coast states, plans to enter the Long Island market by July with three eateries, including the one planned for New Hyde Park, said Kun Mee Jung, marketing manager for Vertex Hospitality Group, the Flushing, Queens-based company that created the Ugly Dumpling concept.

The other two Ugly Dumpling eateries slated for Long Island will open in Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove and in Levittown. The Levittown building, at 3535 Hempstead Tpke., was vacated by a TGI Friday’s in October 2024.

Aside from the three Long Island locations in the works, Ugly Dumpling plans to open 11 other restaurants in New York and New Jersey, as well as Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Texas, according to its website.

The first Ugly Dumpling opened in Edison, New Jersey, in 2023. All of the chain’s locations are franchises, said Jung, who added that she could not immediately provide the names of the Long Island franchisees.

Soup dumplings are a traditional Shanghai food that have soup inside the pastry, said Jung, adding that Ugly Dumpling restaurants combine traditional and modern cuisine.

"And then for us, we tried to kind of make [it] a little bit more refined and creative. ... So we made like a tofu flavor or the spicy pepper, Sichuan pepper flavors in there," she said.

In addition to soup dumplings, the restaurants also serve dim sum, and wok dishes with chicken, beef and vegetables, Jung said.

Ugly Dumpling’s New Hyde Park restaurant will be in a 3,200-square-foot space at 1532 Union Tpke., which was vacated by Mikawa, a Japanese restaurant, a few years ago, said Ellen F. Wasserman, accounting manager for the Lake Success Shopping Center.

Phenix Salon Suites will be taking 14,000 square feet under The Paper Store in the shopping center, in the basement of what used to be a two-level Modell’s Sporting Goods space, Wasserman said.

Cedarhurst couple Gabriel and Sara Abrams are the franchisees, and they also opened a Phenix Salon Suites location in White Plains in 2023 and one in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood in 2025.

The New Hyde Park location is expected to open in June, Sara Abrams said.

"It’s a great location, great area, the shopping center is phenomenal," she said.

The Phenix Salon Suites in New Hyde Park will have 44 suites, about half of which have been rented so far, she said. The occupants will be professionals offering medical spas, tattooing, hairstyling, nail services, etc.

Headquartered in Las Vegas, Phenix Salon Suites has more than 415 locations, including 13 on Long Island and seven in the United Kingdom.

The Lake Success Shopping Center’s current tenants include Target, Burlington, Foot Locker, Victoria’s Secret, Sephora, Bath & Body Works, Italian grocery store Iavarone Bros., Bagel Boss and Shake Shack.

The shopping center’s management declined to disclose the size of the property or its occupancy rate.

But CoStar Group Inc., an Arlington, Virginia-based real estate information provider, said the shopping center is 628,546 square feet and is 94.3% occupied.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.