Kenyan dumpling seller Caroline Mungiria learnt from Chinese cookbooks and now has a Nairobi shop

Caroline Mungiria fell in love with dumplings and then set out to learn how to make them. “I downloaded so many Chinese cookbooks and ordered frozen options from places that stocked them,” she said, as quoted by Business Daily, the Nation Media Group title, on 22 October 2026.

Her search later led her to a Chinese chef, who introduced her to the Chinese palate. Chinatown in Nairobi’s Kilimani was not as big when she was learning as it is now, the paper reported.

In September 2025 she started Noi Dumplings as a cloud kitchen, a delivery-only kitchen, selling cooked and frozen Chinese-style dumplings. It now has a store at Diamond Plaza in Nairobi. The store records 40 to 50 sales a day, against about five when the business sold only online.

Business Daily profiled Mungiria and two other Kenyan dumpling sellers, one more in Nairobi and one in Mombasa.

Noi offers about 20 flavours. Ten cooked dumplings cost KSh 600. Chicken, beef and pork sell best among Kenyan customers, while vegetarian dumplings are more popular with Indian customers.

Customers divide roughly evenly between people who already know dumplings, mainly from Asian and expatriate communities, and curious Kenyans, Mungiria said.

The harder job is explaining the product. “From our experience, most Kenyans didn’t know what a dumpling was,” she said. Customers keep comparing dumplings to samosas, which she said “just complicates things further”. She said some customers find dumplings too expensive, but that once people understand them they tend to become converts quickly.

Tarus Kipkosgei had his first taste of dumplings at a Japanese restaurant. He started Ever Flavour a little over a year before the Business Daily report, with one variety, beef and caramelised onion. The business now has five employees and three varieties.

Kenyans make up about 60 per cent of his customers. Kipkosgei said he now sells three or four times more than he used to, and that many people are cautious about being adventurous with food. “I’d encourage people to explore with their palate a little bit,” he said.

In Mombasa, the founder of Momos Fusion, who goes by Miss Niqaabi, has sold dumplings for four years. The business began after her sister posted on social media asking where she could get authentic steamed dumplings in Mombasa, and orders followed.

Her recipes draw on Nepalese-style dumplings. Momos Fusion sells five varieties; its bestsellers include chicken momos, cheesy pizza momos and dragon momos, a saucy, spicy chicken variety. Portions cost KSh 200 to 600. She also supplies frozen dumplings to shops in Mombasa, and says the biggest challenge is delivering them to customers while still hot.

Of the customers who come to try something new, about 90 per cent come back after their first order, she said.