00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Cusenbet and today I'm on my way into
00:03Affleck's Palace to go for lunch at Desert Island Dumplings. Now this place is one that I've only
00:08been to once before and genuinely what an experience it was. Not only does it do genuinely
00:14wonderful dumplings but they're all vegan, it's independently owned and the staff are
00:19absolutely lovely. So we're going to go in, we're just entering Affleck's now, we're going to go
00:23in, have a chat to the staff, learn a little bit about the story and we'll try some of the food as
00:28well. I started the business during lockdown, me and my housemate Robbie were having like a late
00:33night chat. I was telling him how my sister used to do like deep fried dumplings as a hangover cure
00:38and he never had them deep fried but then we kind of were saying it's a bit rubbish the way
00:43veggie dumplings are always just like vegetables, it's like mushroom and chive or just like straight
00:48assortment of veg and we were like wouldn't it be cool you could have like veggie flavours like
00:53cheeseburger and then it was like like normal. The next day we had like a cheeseburger dumpling
00:59cook-off and then that kind of just got the ball rolling, we were like these are really good and
01:02it just kind of became this thing of like we're making something that you can't get but it's
01:07really good. So I like whacked it on Instagram, my little sister made us a logo, suddenly we were
01:14like whizzing around Liverpool city centre on our bikes dropping them at random people's houses.
01:19Well I was working for Denise who runs the gluten-free pie company in Liverpool and she's amazing and
01:26she's like working class, she's from Kerby and she like was gluten-free and started this pie
01:31business because she couldn't get good gluten-free pies so she was kind of like my mentor. I'd been
01:37athletes only one time before I fell into maybe the misguided crowd that thought it was just like
01:45a place for like teenage gums and you know a place to get your ears pierced but then when I arrived here
01:52and I saw the eclectic mix of traders and all the stuff that's going on the building and I've like
01:58seen that it is totally more than I suppose I like initially thought. A place like Athlex which is so
02:05like LGBTQ friendly is you know being actually a really sweet place to open for us. Despite the popularity of
02:12Desert Island Dumplings it was announced earlier this year that they'll be closing the store in around
02:16June and here's why. The simple reason is that like I haven't had more than four days off in a row
02:24in like three years so yeah the idea is just to take a beat and I'm moving to Edinburgh I'm going to
02:32bring the dumplings to the Scots. The business isn't closing it's just evolving I think is my answer.
02:40So as I go to take the last dumpling from this dumpling roulette I could take solace in the
02:45fact that this won't be my last Desert Island Dumpling ever. I've got confidence that even if
02:50they're not here in Manchester for much longer they'll be around for a long long time.
02:57So that's all for now follow Manchester World for more.
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