Mama Lan

For me hearing the combination of Beijing street food and Brixton market is pretty much like putting crack and a crack pipe in front of a drug addict at this point.  My favourite place to eat in London with some of my favourite food from when I used to be fun and travel a lot (wistful sigh... also please no comments that I never used to be fun).  Mama Lans also has the benefit of being setup by a blogger, so obviously its getting immediate points, it's also a family mother and daughter enterprise - so all very positive and cosy.  So how was it?

In short pretty good.  The cold slow cooked beef came in thin slices with a good star anise flavour as well as a lot of other warm, autumnal spicing, very nice and tender, still moist enough despite the fact that chilling has a drying effect on meat.  The pickles were great, and the dumplings were good.  It was especially fun watching them being hand rolled infront of us the whole time we were there, given the counter puts you practically on top of the kitchen.  The only dissapoinment was that despite the filling being good the dumplings were pretty underseasoned.  At this point, however, I think it's fair to put that down to teething problems given Mama Lans had only been open for a couple of days.  I will definitely go back and try this place again.