Noemi Capizzo doesn’t think making dumplings is an overly-complicated process. As we sat in her commercial kitchen and talked, she effortlessly folded them one by one until she had a sheet-pan full.
It’s something she learned from her mother at a young age growing up in Liuzhou, in the south of China.
Food can be comforting and bring you back to another time and place. For Noemi, her new dumpling business not only fills a niche on Nantucket, it also shares her culture and helps make sure her children don’t forget their roots.
“Growing up my mom made them. It is a family tradition, especially during Chinese New Year,” she said. “I want my kids to know where they’re from, because here, there is no Chinese food. I keep reminding my kids that they are half Chinese.”
Noemi is married to Scott Capizzo, son of the late Whalers football coach Vito Capizzo. The idea of bringing the food she grew up eating to Nantucket started as a COVID-19 project. The dumplings she sells out of Mark and Eithne Yelle’s commercial kitchen on Young’s Way are frozen and come 20 to a bag. All you need is boiling water to drop them into.
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