UConn student Simon Felicione removes his food from a delivery pod at Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, which opened Tuesday in Storrs. Felicione was one of dozens who came to the restaurant during its first hours of operation, saying he found the automat-restaurant idea "very enticing." (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

New York City food-world star Stratis Morfogen came to Storrs on Tuesday to oversee the opening of Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, an automat restaurant where almost everything on the menu — burgers, cheesesteaks, pizza, gyro, etc. — is served as a dumpling.

The shop, at 106 Royce Circle, is the first Connecticut location and the first franchise location of the automat in Manhattan that was founded last year by Morfogen.

“It’s a new take on previous technology. It’s back to the future,” says Matt Rusconi, manager at the Storrs shop. “I love that I can bring this to Connecticut.”

Shop manager Matt Rusconi, left, prepares dumplings during Brooklyn Dumpling Shop's opening day Tuesday. (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

“All my life I would look at pastrami sandwiches,” Morfogen said, and “other huge sandwiches, and I didn’t want to eat them, they were so big. But if they put those ingredients into a two-ounce sandwich, I eat them like M&Ms.”

Morfogen’s founding of Brooklyn Dumpling Shop was inspired by his Brooklyn Chop House, a steakhouse that became famous for wrapping many of its appetizer offerings into dumplings. They became phenomenally popular.

“Four hundred people would eat there one night and there were 400 orders of dumplings,” Morfogen said.

The Storrs shop is the first in an ambitious nationwide expansion. Seventeen are set to open this year, 35 in 2023 and 55 in 2024.

“By 2025, we will be opening one every week,” Morfogen says.

Rusconi, a native of nearby Lebanon who has opened three restaurants in Storrs he no longer owns (Moe’s, MooYah and Wing Stop), heard about Brooklyn Dumpling Shop when it was still under construction. He went down to meet Morfogen.

He tasted Morfogen’s dumplings and saw the possibilities of the automat.

“What with the labor shortage and the mode of to-go changing, I was curious about the automat concept,” Rusconi said.

UConn students Colin Varnet and Ingrid Magaloanes order dumplings Tuesday. (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

The UConn students targeted by the new location of Brooklyn Dumpling Shop are too young to recall the glory days of automats. In the early 20th century, automats — which are essentially multi-pod vending machines the size of a store — could be found in any large northeastern city.

The food for the automat is not pre-made. It is cooked to order and hot. The lockers are heated to 140 degrees. Frozen lockers are at 38 degrees for ice cream and drinks.

Dumpling flavors, which start at $5 a serving, include PBJ, pastrami, Reuben, pepperoni pizza, bacon cheeseburger, cheesesteak, pork and chives, kung pao chicken, short rib, French onion soup, crab soup, veggie soup, seafood, chicken and ginger, Impossible burger with vegan cheese, Impossible kung pao burger, Tex Mex, cheddar burger, Peking duck. The soup dumplings have broth inside them and are floating in broth.

Sides and desserts include waffle fries, onion rings, Asian coleslaw and apple and chocolate desserts.

Cro’Sumplings are breakfast dumplings, with fillings including bacon-egg-cheese, sausage-egg-cheese, spinach-egg-feta and other morning favorites

A mural in the shop is a photograph of Audrey Hepburn at an automat. Marilyn Monroe sang about an automat in “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” A documentary about automats is now showing in New York.

Contractor Radu Sanducu hangs a sign outside the automat-style restaurant where food can be ordered on an app or from tablets in the restaurant then picked up from heated or chilled delivery lockers. (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

Cynthia van Zelm, executive director of the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, said the town is excited by the new restaurant.

“Automats are contactless, which is important in this day and age,” she says.

Morfogen came up with the idea of Brooklyn Dumpling Shop in 2018, but the pandemic has made it a more of-the-moment concept, as the automat format de-emphasizes interaction with service personnel. All transactions are done by credit card online or at a kiosk in the store. Orders can be placed hours in advance. Those who order get a text when their food is ready. A link in the text calls up a QR code. Scanning that code in the store will trip open a locker door, where their food is.

“People can be in and out in literally 30 seconds,” Morfogen said.

Morfogen is also known for the restaurants Philippe Chow, Club Rouge and Gotham City Diner. He, with his partners and singer Patti LaBelle, are bringing a frozen version of the dumplings to Walmart.

The Storrs site is open 11 a.m. to midnight Monday to Wednesday. It closes at 3 a.m. on Thursday and at 4 a.m. Friday and Saturday. brooklyndumplingshop.com/storrs-ct.

Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.