Tower District getting Chinese dumpling, pot sticker restaurant. Say goodbye to Happy Star
Chinese dumpling and noodle restaurant Little Fat Dumpling is planning to open a location in the Tower District.
The restaurant is taking over the former Happy Star Chinese restaurant at 1120 N. Palm Ave., just south of Olive Avenue. The new owners have remodeled the space and hope to open in a couple weeks to a month.
Little Fat Dumpling is the same restaurant that has a location at 8482 N. Friant Road, next to Butterfish in the Park Crossing shopping center near Highway 41.
The Tower location will have a slimmed-down version of the north Fresno menu, said Yaohan Murong, who owns the restaurants with her family.
“It’s very simple over there, it’s more like fast food,” she said.
It will serve dumplings, pot stickers and noodles.
Little Fat Dumpling is the restaurant that The Bee featured in July. The north Fresno location makes Xiao Long Bao soup dumplings, little packages of dough with soup inside that take all day to make. They landed on The Bee’s top 10 list of favorite foods in 2018.
It’s not clear yet if the Tower location will carry the time-consuming dumplings. “Maybe we will add the Xiao Long Bao,” Murong said. “We’re still thinking about it.”
The new location will have other traditional Chinese dumplings, including pork and cabbage dumplings, beef-green onion dumplings, and shrimp, pork and leek dumplings.
Happy Star closed in 2018.
“We remodeled everything,” Murong said, adding that the restaurant’s interior has been modernized.
In addition to the two Little Fat Dumpling locations, Murong and her family also are close to opening Nami, a teppanyaki and sushi restaurant with a full bar in Park Crossing, the shopping center at Friant Road and Fresno Street.
This story was originally published December 31, 2018 at 2:53 PM.
