Jimi Famurewa reviews Mei Mei: A wholly addictive act of cultural celebration

Ambience: 3/5

Food: 5/5

At first glance, the narrative shaping Mei Mei appears to be that of an acclaimed, high-profile cook pivoting to something drastically smaller in scale and ambition.

And, yes, okay; that mostly checks out. It’s true that this tiny counter café from former Pidgin head chef and Michelin star-winner Elizabeth Haigh — a meticulous, loving riff on the thrumming ‘kopitiam’ coffee shops that are an institution in her native Singapore — only has 14 seats, barely 10 items on its menu and precisely one table, parked beneath the gusting maw of an overworked outdoor heater. And it’s also true that its position, underneath the tooth-loosening clatter of a Borough Market railway bridge, can make you feel like the weary inhabitant of a panic-rented house on a Heathrow flight path.

But the important thing to note is that absolutely none of this matters. Because Mei Mei, frankly, might be one of the best new operations of any size currently trading in the capital. It’s a vividly expressed, generous and wholly addictive act of cultural celebration that (fittingly perhaps for a place named after a Chinese term for ‘little sister’) punches wildly above its culinary weight.

I met a pal there on a busy Friday afternoon, and my snap visual judgements were, well, a bit mixed. Perched on the edge of Borough Market’s somewhat jumbled new street-food area, it’s an easy-to-miss, ship’s prow of a space, piled with decorative tins of produce and softened with splashes of pastel paint. It’s tended by a small, smiley team of chefs who, this being winter, are generally so bundled up they bring to mind Joey wearing all of Chandler’s clothes.

Thankfully, the food (a tickbox menu that encompasses an all-day brunch and a few hawker market-derived specials) made everything else melt away. Fried carrot cake was a racy, bubble and squeak-like heap of flash-fried egg batter and softened, ghostly hunks of mooli (or white carrot), electrified by masses of coriander. 

Fragrance was a key part of the Hainanese chicken’s sneakily bewitching appeal, too. Ferried to us by Haigh herself, it is one of those dishes where the unpromising look of it — a mostly beige, anaemic pile of mounded rice and cold slivers of poached bird — only amplifies the life-changing flavour. It was broth-simmered rice tart with accompanying achar pickle and heady, perfumed poultry where sesame, ginger and grassy pandan seemed to have penetrated every succulent atom.

And you can see where this is all heading by now, can’t you? To the point that I probably barely need to tell you about the nasi lemak, with its lacy fried egg, dome of sweet coconut rice, fiery sambal sauce and crisped anchovies, exploding like shattering strips of pure umami. Or the showstopping fried chicken — decisively spiced and packing both the crunch and yielding snag that makes KFC so diabolically effective — that may actually be among the best I’ve ever had.

We finished with kaya toast, an Insta-certified sort of ascetic’s take on a Japanese sando sandwich, featuring beautifully caramelised, drippy coconut jam and a hefty tile of cold, thick-cut butter. Deep, dark sugar-roasted coffees came, in true kopitiam style, marbled by a knob of butter and/or sweet enough to make you lightly hallucinate. 

It served as another admirable example of Mei Mei as a concentrated showcase for a specific brand of cheap, fast Singaporean hospitality, presented without awkward fusion flourishes or nervous concessions to Western sensibilities. It may merely be an act of transition; a stop-off as Haigh edges towards a bigger, more polished operation. But — as those trains rumble noisily overhead — it turns this professional voyage of discovery into something truly breathtaking.

Mei Mei

1 Fried carrot cake £3.75

1 Hainanese chicken rice £8.50

1 Nasi lemak with fried chicken £8.50

1 Extra fried chicken £3

1 Extra sambal £1

1 Kaya toast £3

2 Cans of Brewgooder Clean Water lager £9

1 Kopi coffee £3

1 Kopi Gu You coffee £3.50

Total £43.25

Unit 52, Borough Market Kitchen, Jubilee Place, SE1 (meimei.uk)