Linda Falkenstein
The sticky rice, mushroom and scallion shumai is a comfort food classic.
Takeout is fine. Don’t get me wrong. I love to eat on my own back patio, or collapsed on the couch watching the Brewers game. But food is not quite the same after steaming in a container during the 10-minute drive home, or worse, a 20- or 30-minute drive. That’s why the return of indoor dining this summer, before the Delta surge, felt like such a relief to many diners, me included.
Feast Artisan Dumpling opened a year ago and from the start had to adapt to the pandemic. It’s still open dinner hours only, with an abbreviated menu focused mostly on small plates. Dine-in options at Feast include both a fairly spacious, serene dining area with tables spaced a comfortable distance apart, and a pleasant side patio area. It’s fenced off from Willy Street, with Asian-motif table umbrellas and Edison string lights, all in the shadow of neighboring apartment balconies, as if the whole enterprise were in an alley somewhere in China.
Feast also has these super cute little takeout bags decorated with what look like watercolor paintings: bright red Chinese paper lanterns and fans pop from an inky black background. (I’m saving them.) It’s like getting takeout from a high-end boutique, which can make you feel a little better about why you may be going back to takeout again these days. The bags are just one sign that Feast cares about the small touches, even when you’re taking the food home.
Dumplings travel fairly well, although they have a tendency to get gummy. But they are better fresh out of the kitchen, and you may want to capitalize on that, because Feast’s fresh house-made dumplings are very good.
The menu is divided into appetizers and dumplings (with two sweet dishes as dessert) but it’s really all appetizers: a shareable nosh, Chinese tapas, an Asian smorgasbord, however you want to characterize it. It’s dim sum for dinner.
There’s a wine and beer list, as well as teas served by the pot (white, green, black, oolong and herbal).
Start with something green and refreshing. I’d go for the cucumber salad, presented beautifully with a light fish sauce dressing. Spicy edamame were fine, not terribly spicy, but with a slight hint of what seemed like fennel.
The scallion pancakes, crisp and flaky on the outside and melty and bready inside, are the best I’ve had in years. It’s hard to explain the attraction of this simple dish, but it is more than the sum of its parts.
Puffy white buns folded over like tacos can be ordered with pork belly, beef brisket or tofu; the fillings could use more of the appealing sweetish housemade secret sauce. The tofu version (which is vegan) could also use more cucumber and more marinated spicy tofu, and the tofu could use more of the spicy marinade. And more of the wonderful crispy red pepper flakes! It was all very good, but outwitted by the bun.
Ordering the fish balls appetizer for the table was not my idea, but I ended up eating most of them. The marble-sized orbs are fried in an almost unnoticeable breading; the interior has the texture of a hot dog, if not the flavor punch. The drizzle of chipotle mayo made these a fun novelty, but I probably wouldn’t get them again.
Dumplings, 11 varieties in all, are different from most other dumplings on Madison Asian restaurant menus in that pork is not the star of the show. Pork appears in tandem with shrimp in the delectable shrimp shumai, and that’s it. No pork and chive, no pork and ginger…well, no pork.
Seafood takes the lead role. There’s a shrimp har gow dumpling and a scallop dumpling, and shrimp has a special guest role in the pea shoot dumpling, an interesting version dominated by the earthy, vegetal pea shoots.
There are three kinds of beef dumplings — ribeye and cilantro, ribeye and onion, and ribeye and carrot. Ribeye does not bring the depth of flavor that pork does to the dumpling game but these are quite good and a great option for meat eaters who don’t eat pork. Available either steamed or pan fried, they bring to mind the beef pelmeni at Paul’s Pel’meni, which is not a bad thing. One thing I did miss at Feast across the board was the zing of ginger, so often found in Asian dumplings.
The remaining fillings are vegetarian. (Vegetarians will have a lot to choose from here. Dishes are marked as vegetarian; some are vegan, but not always marked as such and diners should ask.) I loved the sticky rice shumai, with the tulip-shaped wrapper overstuffed with a blend of sticky rice, mushroom and scallion. These come hot in a bamboo steamer, and they’re really all about their comfort-food texture, yielding yet chewy, although you can pep them up with the accompanying sweet hoisin sauce or a spicier red pepper sauce. Or, as our waiter suggested, mix the two. A wonderful suggestion, for which I thank him. Sometimes it’s the little things.
Feast Artisan Dumpling and Tea House
904 Williamson St.
608-298-7461
5-9:30 p.m. Sun.-Thurs., 5-10 p.m. Fri.-Sat.
$5-$13
feastmadison.com; IG: @feastartisandumpling
