Our story begins in San Gabriel, California when Alan Lam and Grace Li founded Luscious Dumpling in 2001. The latter of which was born and raised in Shenyang, a northern province known for their dumplings.
The word “luscious” is derived from the Chinese name of the store — 潤豐元 Run Feng Yuan, or more literally — Moist Abundant Garden. The Chinese name was chosen because it sounds pretty in Mandarin. But they decided, appropriately, that the word moist sounded weird in the context of the dumplings and opted for luscious instead.
Their daughter, Michelle Wu and her husband Ker Zhu opened the Monrovia outpost of Luscious in 2012. She was a nurse and he worked in fashion, but both dropped out of their respective careers for the world of dumplings and to join the family business. In many ways, the couple represented the new wave of Chinese restaurateurs in the San Gabriel Valley where the first generation retired and the children stepped up. The couple has been able to maintain their traditional family recipes passed down from previous generations.