Before she was at the center of Momo Shack Himalayan Dumplings, one of North Texas’ hottest pop-up food concepts, Minu Amatya began each workday driving a moped through the bustling streets of Lalitpur, Nepal, to work as a teller at Nepal Bank Limited. When she learned about the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, a U.S. State Department lottery that grants 55,000 visas annually to countries with low numbers of immigrants to the United States, she filled out applications for every member of her family.
Winning the lottery is a long shot ― there are around 23 million applications each year ― so when she received a selection letter with her husband Lokendra Amatya’s picture, she was shocked. The Amatyas, with their son Leezen and daughter Lipsa, landed in San Diego in 2003 on Minu’s 38th birthday.
The family moved to Plano shortly afterward for the lower cost of living and highly rated schools. As the Amatyas set about finding new jobs and learning how to drive and speak English, Leezen used his mom’s dumplings — called momos throughout the Himalayan regions of South Asia — as a way to make friends in the middle school cafeteria. He found that nearly everyone liked them.
Momos resemble xiao long bao (Chinese soup dumplings), but in addition to meat fillings, they have green cabbage, a lot more onions, and the perfume of chili powder and Indian spices. As Momo Shack’s motto reminds, “It’s what’s inside that counts.”
In Nepal, momos are eaten as frequently as Americans eat fast food, and they are almost always good. But to have Minu’s momos is to enjoy these morsels with her sauces that have a distinct homemade taste. Her two main sauces ― spicy tomato and cilantro ― contain sesame seeds blended with spices that intensify while eating, which is important if, like Leezen, you can eat 40 at a time.
Sharing Minu’s momos became an obsession that stayed with Leezen through college at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he met Thang Duong and Daniel Flores in the Naveen Jindal School of Management. The classmates had all started as ESL students in Plano schools; they had each emigrated to the U.S. when they were 10 years old; and they all came from dumpling-empanada cultures, with Duong from Vietnam and Flores from Mexico. Soon after meeting, the friends started brainstorming a business venture, but it wasn’t until Leezen returned, inspired, from his first solo trip to Nepal that the group committed to selling momos.
Irving, home to one of America’s largest Nepali-American populations, has two momo restaurants — Momo Stop, housed in a Texaco gas station, and Cafemandu, which opened last year. But Momo Shack hosts monthly pop-ups all around North Texas, and they also host momo-making classes.
Momo Shack began with a rejection from the Dallas Farmers Market, but the market agreed to meet with the highly driven group who wanted feedback on how to improve for the next application window. They brought momos with them and, suddenly, were asked to start the next weekend.
Incidentally, Minu was the last person asked to join Momo Shack — an idea she at first refused. But when Leezen and his friends planned to work the first event by themselves, her mothering instincts kicked in and she agreed to help just one time.
Two years later, Minu is the “backbone of the business,” according to Leezen. Her specials, like fried Nutella momos and jhol momos in a Szechuan peppercorn sauce, vary at monthly pop-ups that now take place in breweries instead of at The Shed at the farmers market. Minu says she couldn’t quit because of how the compliments made her feel.
“When people come back to tell me how good my momos are, it gives me goose bumps,” she says.
Tim Lee of the popular Instagram account Tim vs. Food (@tim_vs_food) and Sandwich Hag’s Reyna Duong, affectionately called “Chef Reye,” were pivotal in shaping the new company. When Thang Duong of the group learned that Tim vs. Food was actually his daytime co-worker, he of course shared some momos with him. Lee promoted Momo Shack on his 26,000-follower account and introduced them to Reye, who became a mentor and quick friend. She calls the Momo Shack team her “Day Ones,” friends since the beginning.
Drawing on her background in finance, as well as her experience as a person of color trying to sell unconventional food, Reye helped them set a profitable price point and discouraged the use of samples. After trying the momos, she invited them to her Lunar New Year market in February of 2018. Momo Shack was one of the first pop-ups to sell out, and they soon discovered they could make the same amount of money in a few hours working in a climate-controlled brewery as they could in a full day outside at The Shed.
Today, the group aims for one monthly pop-up, plus momo-making classes. They’ll continue their presence at Sandwich Hag’s Night Markets, like the one coming March 21, which will combine celebrations for World Down Syndrome Day and the Vietnamese New Year, Tết.
Unlike many pop-ups, Momo Shack is not aiming to become a restaurant. In the finals round of one of UT Dallas’ Big Idea Competitions, an annual Shark Tank-style campus event, Momo Shack was encouraged to “think bigger.” To them, that means developing a momos-at-home retail concept that they’re still working out. In the meantime, they want to focus on momo education and awareness of Nepali culture.
For a long time after moving here, Minu wished to return to Nepal, where she had family and a lot more money. But now she says she likes living here “very much.”
Along with the help of her children, she learned English from regular customers at the gas station where she once worked. She’s now a cashier at Walmart, a job she says she loves because it gives her the opportunity to meet nice people and to continue to practice her English.
But she’s glad to once again have a community centered around making momos, just like when she was a young girl back home in Nepal.
Visit momoshackdumplings.com for a list of upcoming pop-up events and momo-making classes.
