Having grown up in Malaysia and emigrated to the UK at the age of 15, Abby Lee’s affection for authentic Malaysian cuisine didn’t come until later in life, culminating in a landmark moment last year when she moved her restaurant Mambow (‘Malaysian Heat and Juicy Wines’) from a market stall in Peckham to the fixed walls of Lower Clapton Road.

Mambow’s kitchen team is now four members strong, and currently all female; ‘a gentle gang’, as Abby calls it. Finding the right people to fill new roles, respect the intention and learn the references of hyper-regional Malaysian cooking was a feat in and of itself. The menu currently changes every two months, which, Abby tells us, ‘Takes the team about two weeks to really get used to. It’s not always second nature to them. Only one is Malaysian, so most are learning techniques or flavours from scratch which I’m impressed with – for just knowing how to season things according to how I want it to be, because they don’t have the same context.’

Abby’s context is impressive and classically trained. Supper clubs for friends and an innate culinary curiosity led her into a year-long course at London’s Le Cordon Bleu, in her words ‘to see if [she] could even cook’. Twelve months of rigorous French training exposed exactly what she wanted and – more importantly – didn’t want, to take forwards. ‘I remember learning all the different ways to debone a chicken and 7,000 ways of making a stock and thinking, it’s interesting, but I don’t think I’ll be carrying on in this vein. Or how to wrap a little ballotine thing.’ This didn’t deter her from a subsequent two-year stint at Michelin-starred restaurants in Puglia; formative years which Abby credits with teaching her the ordered art of running a kitchen. ‘It’s more like a discipline that you can transfer into which I really respect. You need to have a balance between the hyper-regimented, hierarchical brigade system and a little bit more of a relaxed atmosphere in the kitchen.’
The confidence of the former but overriding sense of the latter is perhaps why Mambow is already thriving – that, and the rare specificity of the Malaysian cuisine on offer. Abby has set forth a menu of ‘newness’; dishes we’ve neither seen nor eaten before that take us from the north to the south of Malaysia through our forks, including family recipes and the choice foods of aunties that we would otherwise never discover. For Abby, a rendang would be the easy choice, but the desire to keep changing, learning, and shocking is too great. Crispy Top Hats with stir fried yam bean, grilled banana blossom, Perut Ikan inspired curry sauce; it’s a menu as intriguing as it is mouthwatering.

As with many Asian cuisines, the ingredients list for Malaysian cooking is hefty and hard-to-find – especially with such a diverse menu. This is where community comes in, with Abby initiated into a WhatsApp group that helps to source everything from Kicap Manis to Asam Jawa.

‘It’s an underground network. Like, all these 40-year-old Malaysian women getting in produce. Now having been introduced to the community and realising just how many Malaysian people live in London, I just cannot believe it. It really has fed my soul.’

Most of Abby’s family still live in Malaysia and her yearly visits swell her desire to further stipulate the regionality of her menu – especially with scarcely any other UK restaurants cooking the same food. Abby’s annual trip East is an inspiration dive – although much less a holiday and more of a competitive eating marathon. ‘Last April, I found myself trying to cover six different parts of Malaysia, but at the end of it you’re so tired, you’ve crammed it all in, you just feel a bit sick you’ve eaten so much.’ On the day of our chat, Abby’s family were over to visit her in London and had planned, of course, to come and eat at the new restaurant – a meal heavy with the weight of familial pressure and loving expectation. ‘At the moment I have lots of my mum’s home recipes on the menu, so you can just feel the judgement that’s going to be coming.’

But if my greedy opinions and those of Mambow’s diners are anything to go by, I am sure this reunion will have been a huge – and delicious – success.