Mama Lan

Opened in September 2011, the restaurant grew out of a supper club run by owner Ning and her mother. It specialises in the street food of Beijing, in particular dumplings. Not to be confused with dim sum dumplings, these are made from a thicker wheat flour wrapper and are bigger in size. Each one is hand made in the restaurant and you can watch them take shape while you wait for your food. This is a true family business: Ning’s mother and aunts ran a stall in Beijing around the time of the Cultural Revolution and, once they moved to the UK, they were keen to show British people that there is much more to the cuisine of the most populous nation on earth than we knew.