Lee launched Mambow in Spitalfields just before the pandemic as an affordable breakfast and lunch-focused bowl food spot but the brand will return as a more complete restaurant offering a menu that takes ‘an enlightened, fresh and playful’ approach to Malaysian cuisine alongside natural wines.
The site will share a 1,750 sq ft 60-cover ground floor space with rotisserie chicken, beers and cocktails concept Rotorious.
Dishes will include The M Wing (deep-fried chicken wing tossed in an anchovy sambal served with lime); Hainanese chicken sando; acar awak (pickled seasonal vegetables and pineapple with coriander seeds and crushed peanuts); lor bak (deep-fried five spice pork and prawn rolls in a bean curd skin); and kerabu glass noodles (roasted and pounded desiccated coconut, herbs, shallots, vegan sambal, tofu puffs, beansprouts and lime).
There will also be a trio of curries: Gulai Nangka (mild yellow coconut curry with jackfruit topped with fried aromatics); ikan assam pedas (hot and sour fish curry with okra, aubergine and tamarind); and black pepper chicken.
Mambow will trade in close proximity to Forza Wine; and ramen restaurant Tonkotsu.
Lee grew up working in her family’s bakeries in Singapore and Malaysia before moving to Italy to cook at Michelin-starred Pashà Ristorante near the city of Bari.