ACROSS CULTURES, BORDERS, languages, and histories, there are certain food traditions that seem universal. One such tradition—broadly that of a cooked dough wrapped around a filling—can be found everywhere from Nepal (momo) to Turkey (manti), from India (samosas) to Korea (mandu) to Ecuador (empanadas), and to all of its varieties in China (jiaozi, bao, guo tie, etc.). It’s the dumpling, and it’s now made a local home in the Skagit Valley-based West Coast Dumpling Company.
Running out of a commercial space with an attached commissary kitchen tucked in downtown Sedro-Woolley, West Dumpling Company is the result of a local stay-at-home mom’s career journey during COVID. After a few stints with other companies, including the SeaBear Smokehouse in Anacortes, Yuliya Wilson decided that she wanted to start her own business making and selling food from her Eastern European heritage. She searched for a product that would be both feasible to freeze and ship as well as easy and fast to make at home, with an emphasis on capturing the authentic flavors of her family’s home cooking. Ultimately, Wilson settled on dumplings of Polish (pierogi) and Russian (pelmeni and piroshki) food traditions, which can be cooked with butter and/or favorite sauces for a delicious comfort meal.
Photo by Leigh Hellman
“I love cooking,” Wilson shares. “But more than cooking, I love sharing the food. Pierogies are family food—we only made them when company was coming over—and now we and now we
get to hear about new family traditions that are being made with our customers and our products.”
In many ways, family is what West Coast Dumpling Company is all about. Wilson came to the U.S. from Eastern Europe on a high school exchange program with Anacortes High School 30 years ago and ended up staying here permanently. She got married and raised a family, all while remaining an active part of her exchange homestay family (her “American family” as she calls them). Her business is family food, and her five employees come from a variety of backgrounds that allow them all to share their cultures, food, music, and languages with each other.
She has also gained family at the farmers markets that she vends at including Bellingham, Skagit Valley, Anacortes, Bellevue, Everett, and Marysville. Outside of markets, West Coast Dumpling Company products are available at Pioneer Marketplace in Sedro-Woolley, SeaBear Smokehouse in Anacortes, Puget Sound Food Hub, both Community Food Co-Ops in Bellingham, as well as other local co-ops around the sound. As the business continues to expand, Wilson hopes to soon gain a license for national sales and be featured in the aisles at Haggen.
Photo by Leigh Hellman
Wilson attributes the growing success of West Coast Dumpling Company to its commitment to authentic, home-rooted care for both its products and its communities. She also believes that Americans crave truly homemade food across cultural barriers because—over the course of the last several decades—American food culture has lost that aspect of itself.
“Making small differences for a few folks is just as valuable as making large differences,” Wilson asserts about her community-minded business philosophy. She adds: “I want to see how far I can go with this, because I love the journey so far.” 901 3rd St., Sedro-Woolley, 360.770.8435, westcoastdumplingcompany.square.site
