The momo is having its moment. The pleated Himalayan dumpling that Nepali and Tibetan cooks have been folding for generations has spent the last few years moving from Jackson Heights outward, and it has now crossed the county line. A chain called Momo2Go has opened at 231 Jericho Turnpike in New Hyde Park, and it is the company's first location in New York State.

That is a slightly strange sentence to write about a business with ten locations, so it is worth explaining. Momo2Go is not a New York company. It launched in 2016 as a sister brand to a restaurant called Himalayan Kitchen, and it grew north and west: Toronto, Etobicoke, Mississauga, Brampton, Scarborough, Niagara Falls. Then it jumped to Dallas. New Hyde Park is where it landed next, which makes a strip of Jericho Turnpike between the Nassau border and the LIRR station the company's entire foothold in the Northeast.

What a momo actually is

If your reference point for a dumpling is the pork bun at a dim sum cart, a momo is a cousin rather than a sibling. The wrapper is thinner and pleated shut at the top, the filling is seasoned with the warmer end of the spice shelf, and the thing it comes with matters as much as the dumpling: a tomato and sesame based sauce, sometimes served as a dip, sometimes as a soup the dumplings sit in.

Momo2Go's New Hyde Park menu takes that base and runs a long way with it. The straightforward versions are there, steamed, pan fried, fried and jhol, the last of those being the soupy one, priced from $13.99 to $14.99. Then the menu opens up into a section it calls Chef's Special Momos, which is where the Himalayan and Indian sides of the kitchen meet: butter chicken momo, tikka momo, tandoori momo, makhani momo, manchurian momo, afghani momo, a kurkure momo coated for crunch, and two Szechuan versions, one creamy and one not. Most land at $14.99, with the tandoori and the crispier ones a dollar more.

Beyond dumplings there is a full chili and Manchurian section, chowmein and fried rice in vegetable and chicken versions, and a soya chaap corner, which is worth a note for anyone who has not encountered it: chaap is a wheat protein served on a skewer, and in a tandoor it does a genuinely convincing impression of a kebab. Paneer and gobi get the same chili and Manchurian treatments. Sides run to peri peri fries and chicken lollipops.

The kitchen is entirely halal, which the company states plainly on its own menu, and paneer momos carry a $2 upcharge. A mango lassi is $5.99.

Why this address

New Hyde Park is a sensible place to try this. The village sits right on the Queens line, a few minutes from the Nassau end of the Hillside Avenue corridor, in a stretch of Long Island where the South Asian and Himalayan population has grown steadily for two decades. It is also a real Main Street kind of business district rather than a mall pad, which means a $14 plate of dumplings has neighbors to trade foot traffic with.

The operating company is Zambala Momo LLC, doing business as Momo2Go, and it has already turned up as a member of the New Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce, which is usually a sign an owner intends to be part of the block rather than pass through it.

Hours are worth checking before you drive: the company lists the New Hyde Park shop as opening at 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and at noon Friday through Sunday, closing at 9:30 p.m. every night. That is a dinner-first schedule, and the weekend noon opening is the one to remember.

The thing worth noticing

Long Island's restaurant openings tend to arrive from two directions. Either a local family opens a second place, or a national brand picks a shopping center. Momo2Go is neither. It is a mid-sized Canadian chain that decided its New York debut belonged in New Hyde Park rather than in Manhattan or Queens, where the momo audience is already established and the rent is punishing.

That decision is a small compliment to the Island, and it is the kind that tends to be followed by others. Nassau's dining map has been filling in for a while now with food that used to require a trip west. A pleated dumpling in a bamboo steamer on Jericho Turnpike is a modest thing on its own. As a signal about who is willing to open here, it is not modest at all.