With 10 fillings and 10 seats, Heartling is not your usual dumpling fix

We take it for granted, but having a stranger feed you is an intimate and trusting act. Suby Liu feels this deeply, finding it both an honour and a responsibility to have people visit her 10-seat dumpling temple.

Dumplings are often a brisk bite amid bustle. In contrast, Heartling is calm and meditative, asking the eater to truly taste and cherish, and be nourished and appreciated in return.

The small shop faces the lawn in front of Docklands' excellent waterfront library; it's one of the nicest parts of the precinct. Step into Heartling and you'll see wafty curtains, one long table in dark timber, and a textured wall with painted lettering that says "slow dining". You can take this to mean contemplative rather than dragging.

Liu is an architect turned dumpling artisan, one of many who found the disruption of COVID an opportunity to rethink her direction. Her dad is a Chinese restaurateur from way back. The daughter never wished to follow her father's footsteps … until she did, seeing a way to fuse her design expertise, an interest in nutrition and meditation, and a desire to be closer to her parents by understanding their enterprise from the inside. Heartling, open since last winter, is the unconventional, considered result.

There are 10 dumplings – five vegetarian and five seafood – folded into a shape that suggests a heart. If you order The Complete Collection, you get one of each variety. A detailed menu lists each dumpling's hero ingredient and its other components, all the way down to salt and pepper. 

It's a signal of Liu's desire to be transparent, but there's theatre too: dumpling wrappers are called "costumes", as though the morsels are characters in a play.

The multicoloured dumpling skins have an inner portion dramatically darkened with black cocoa. Pushing the culinary narrative, an expository sentence accompanies each dish description. Prawn, for example, is "an emerald jewel … a wild union of untamed characters". There's a lot going on if you want to go deep; if you just want to chow down, that's fine too.

The flavours are complex yet gentle. Scallop is combined with mushroom and white bean; sweet potato is blended with lentil, tomato and capsicum; the lobster dumpling's "costume" includes turmeric, while the jackfruit and jalapeno dumpling's wrapper is greened with spinach. Each has a different dipping sauce.

A short drinks list includes sake and cocktails, but tea feels aligned with the character of the place, even more so when each pot is presented with an egg timer and an encouragement to refrain from pouring until three minutes have expired. It's a tangible, cautionary reminder of the impetus to haste.

Heartling isn't fully realised yet. Some of the dumplings taste more earnest than delicious, and the pastry wrappers are more about sturdy construction and colour play than ethereal delicacy.

As an experience, though, Heartling is unique and uplifting, an authentic striving for connection transmitted in careful, edible ceremony.