Winter Dumpling Feast comes to O Mandarin in Hicksville
Wintertime is dumpling time at O Mandarin in Hicksville. While the regular menu always features four varieties, the elegant 2-year-old Chinese restaurant is serving nine exquisite specimens through Feb. 24, the end of the Lunar New Year celebration.
Mala pork and mushroom dumplings at O Mandarin’s Winter Dumpling Feast in Hicksville. Credit: Randee Daddona
If you’re accustomed to plain-Jane dumplings that hide their gustatory light under a beige bushel, get ready for these showstoppers. Chef Wang Tong Gang, O Mandarin’s dumpling specialist, has a gift for fauna: black-and-white penguins, filled with puréed red dates and pine nuts, that look like they could march right out of the steamer basket, little white bunny dumplings filled with shrimp and bamboo shoots, bright-green dumplings whose wrappers have been fashioned into frogs (complete with black sesame-seed eyes and scaly skin) stuffed with spicy pork.
But he’s not too shabby when it comes to flora: Bright yellow sunflowers are stuffed with scallops, shrimp and yellow leeks. The show-stoppingest dumplings may be the only all-vegetable ones. Using wrappers that he has tinted green only around the edges, Wang encases the filling, crimps it and, somehow, manages to make the dumpling look like a tiny head of bok choy (Chinese cabbage).
Mixed vegetable dumplings at O Mandarin’s Winter Dumpling Feast in Hicksville. Credit: Randee Daddona
Owner Peter Liu said dumplings are central to two Chinese winter festivals: Dongzhi (“winter arrival”), which marks the solstice; and the New Year, which begins on Feb. 10 this year and runs through Feb. 24.
“For New Year, the dumpling is like a pocketful of fortune," he said. "When I was growing up in Shanghai, there would be a few coins hidden in the dumplings. And whoever got those dumplings had extra good luck.”
“When we celebrate New Year at home, we always make dumplings. They might be simple, but it’s about the process — all the flour flying around, the happy faces.” Cooking might take all day, he said. “Then we’re watching TV, eating dinner, seeing the fireworks. When we come home, we eat the dumplings — they are the last dish of the celebration, but the first dish of the new year.”
But, unlike homestyle dumplings, restaurant dumplings are meant to wow. The home cook would not have the time or the skill to craft dumplings that resemble frogs or penguins or rabbits or peacocks.
Chicken mushroom and truffle dumplings at O Mandarin’s Winter Dumpling Feast in Hicksville. Credit: Randee Daddona
Chef Wang’s dumplings not only command attention, they command commitment: They are not available a la carte, nor in individual portions. You’ll need to corral a bunch of friends and make a reservation for your own “Winter Dumpling Feast.” Amazingly, the dumplings are only part of that feast. Before the onslaught, your table will be graced with cold dishes such as cucumber salad and crispy tofu-skin rolls. And after your last dumpling course, a tureen of pumpkin soup afloat with mini dumplings, you’re still looking at a crispy whole fish, enormous “four happiness” meatballs, pea leaves with shiitake mushrooms and, believe it or not, dessert.
Groups of eight to 10 get the “grand set” of nine dumplings for $428; groups of four to six get a “mini set” of seven dumplings for $288.
O Mandarin, 600 W. Old Country Rd., Hicksville, 516-622-6666, omandarin.com. Open Monday to Thursday 11:30. a.m. to 9:15 p.m., Friday to Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday: 11:30 a.m. to 8:45 p.m.
