This is a restaurant that made me feel both young and old. Let’s start with the old: the restaurant is located on Lower Clapton Road in Hackney. When I was in my twenties that would have been like a cool new restaurant opening in Grimsby – unlikely but not impossible and in any event irrelevant as no way was I going to go there. But the world has changed and East London is now unrecognizable compared to how it was in the 90s and early 2000s.
But it also made me feel very young and reminded me if anything of living in New York in the late 90s and “discovering” cool hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Alphabet City. Which was a whole lot more dangerous to visit in those days than Hackney has ever been.
This is the first permanent site for Abbey Lee’s Malaysian food. She first hit the London food scene with a pop-up on Commercial Street in 2020, then Nyonya-style meal kits during lockdown, and later launched a market stall in Peckham. This permanent space has allowed Lee devise a larger menu, showcasing a wide breadth of regional Malaysian dishes and specialities – with a particular focus on Lee’s Peranakan heritage and Nyonya cuisine.
Mambow has the tell tale sign on approach of no obvious signage – just a window and black outside walls, with the most discreet of indentifiers. Inside all is very enticing with a long bar, tables, comprise of not quite matching in a quite cool way, hunched against one wall with enough space but not too much and that burble of a very happy bunch of people focused on the food, the drinks and their friends, very much in that order.
And what a brave new world of flavour and excitement this food is. We tried Achar, a delicate but vibrant selection of crunchy, pickled vegetables and smashed peanuts. This was followed by Lor Bak, astonishing five spiced pork rolls that were crispy and soft and sang in the mouth. Excetional also was Umai, a fresh Sarawak-style ceviche with coconut milk, tamarind granita and chive oil.
Then otak-otak prawn toast with red curry and kaffir leaf prawns on wild betel lead with a little sweet coconut. By the way, I’m reasonably good with spice but be warned most of the dishes are on the hot side of life, so take the balancing sweetness when you can. Prtkam Heong mussels came shells upwards like cupped hands with a soy and curry leaf mixture giving real warmth (and not long after that real fire).
Then for me the dish of the evening, Kerabu Jantung Pisang, a mind blowing salad of grilled banana blossom, sambal oelek, spiced frend peanuts and herb salad. I had never tried banada blossom before – it is a purple tear-shape flower that grows at the end of a banana fruit cluster. Once the inedible dark outer petals are removed, the inside reveals yellowish tightly-packed petals similar to the way artichokes look but have a taste all of their own. What made this salad so special was the balance and mixture of textures together with flavour and heat that had both the taste buds and the mind buzzing away. All we could manage after this was an excellent black pepper washed down with more Thai beer – the consumption rate of which increased (advice aside) with the heat.
Service was prompt and very friendly – not always a given in these parts, and the atmosphere was like being at a party you know you are not quite cool enough for but they are charming about it and in return you are delighted they let you come along.
So the new beats the old hands down at this really exceptional new restaurant. I was in Dublin recently complaining to a friend that the menu was the same at every restaurant we went to scallops or smoked salmon then steak or fish and chips. Good quality mind, but identical all the same. London was once like that – we all loved Le Caprice, L’Odeon, Mirabelle et al, but lets face it, it was all the same food. And there were no Nyonya dishes that I can remember. London is not like that any more; we get to experience food from all over the world, sometime traditional, sometimes with the most astonishing modern twists. That’s a lot better than the same menu, and Mambow is a perfect example of this. It’s a privilege to be able to eat such food in London. Go soon.
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