At Little Dumpling King in Stoke-on-Trent’s Hanley, they make their own crispy chilli oil, which is much more crispy chilli than oil. This is a smart move, partly because it indicates a commitment to doing things properly and partly because they use so much, they’d go bust if they had to buy it retail. There are fat piles of the stuff across the dumplings, and in drifts around the deep-fried chicken wings, and as part of the “gnarly seasoning” on the sticky rice. The curious thing is that it doesn’t get repetitive, this clash and batter of heat and toastiness. It ends up feeling more like a signature; a mark of the place and its determination to beat you into happy submission with plate after plate of huge, banging flavours.
Not every restaurant is for everyone. Initially, I wasn’t convinced Little Dumpling King would be for me. They make much of their reasonably priced natural wine list. They are enthusiastic about their loud music. After lunch I asked about their playlist. “2000s indie,” owner and head chef Rob McIntyre told me. “A bit of heavy metal. Some American sad Midwest emo.” I asked if the latter is an actual genre. Rob said it was and I decided not to check, because I’m 58 and have no business knowing one end of a sad Midwestern emo from another. In the evenings, it’s loud depending on mood. At lunchtime, it’s just a dull roar. The music “helps with my anxiety” said Rob, who has dark, twinkly eyes and the kind of beard that probably saves time in the morning. The floors are bare. The chairs are red. The walls are black and, according to the framed posters hung upon them, “The working class strikes back” and “We hate the fucking government”. The menu carries the legend “pure graft”.
The overwhelming sense is that the people who work here give a damn, about quite a lot of things. When the knuckle-dragging, spittle-flecked racist thugs kicked off in Stoke in August, the team at Little Dumpling King were ferocious on social media. They denounced the bastards – that’s a technical term, accurately used – and stuck up for the multi-ethnic community of which they are a part. They serve a menu that wanders Asia with the enthusiasm of fans who have bought every album and know every lyric. What they do and what they love is a celebration of inclusiveness; of migration and influences from elsewhere. And they weren’t bloody having it. On principle, therefore, I had already decided I loved the place before I’d even stepped inside. Then I ate their food, leaned into it and over it, and I fell in love with them all over again.
At the top of the ever-changing menu are big fat steamed pork dumplings, full of depth and meatiness. Better still are the steamed haggis dumplings, which sound like a night out in Glasgow gone very right. The shiny, translucent skins give way to a peppery filling, with just the right hint of inner animal. There is the heavy mess of crispy chilli, with sesame seeds and the green fleck of sliced spring onion, to help you feel you’re getting your vegetables. The chicken wings, four muscle-bound three-part specimens for £7.75, are described on the menu as “dead good”. We should probably be suspicious of a kitchen marking its own homework, but don’t argue, because they are. The batter is thick, crisp and deeply savoury. Lumps of it, like chip shop scraps, give heft to the surrounding mounds of crispy chilli.
Dishes like this can look as if they’re engineered to bludgeon you. But hidden behind the bravado and the noise is an attention to detail. Thick slices of salmon crudo, in a soy and green herb oil dressing that shines under the lights, come sprinkled with popping, bursting wild garlic buds, picked and pickled months ago. The most expensive dish, at a mighty £14, is a generous serving of steak tartare, minced and correctly seasoned and laid with a raw egg yolk so you can mix it in yourself. It’s finished with something they did not need to add: a thick grating of cured egg yolk. Scoop it away with golden shards of what they call “wonton skin poppadoms”.
It’s not all meaty. There are jackfruit dumplings and a mung bean hummus. There’s a rice bowl topped with pumpkin croquettes and hot sauce, alongside various bao. One houses a slab of tofu, battered and deep-fried to create a layer of crunch beneath the soft bun, which in turn gives way to creamy bean curd. It’s tiled with slices of gherkin and dribbled with hot sauce. We also have a huge bowl of mussels, big soft plump ones, in a rust-coloured tom yum broth with just a little coconut milk, so it stays light and invigorating. It would be restorative if we needed restoring, but we don’t. We are reeling a little now because we have over-ordered. Partly, we’ve done this because the prices are so damn reasonable. Afterwards, I will tell them I worry a little about their profit margins; they will tell me they do, too, sometimes. But also, it’s because ordering all of this is a way of showing enthusiasm for their efforts. Usually, I just want a restaurant to look after me. There’s something so gentle about Little Dumpling King that makes me want to look after them.
There is just one dessert today and in keeping with the haggis dumplings at the start, it is a deep-fried Mars bar. Well, of course it is. There’s a right way to deep fry confectionery and a wrong way. Leave the bar bobbing in the fat for too long and you end up with a dissolved mess, only just held in place by the batter. It barely resembles its origins. Get it right and you have a stratified fritter. In short, if it’s possible to deep fry a Mars bar sensitively that’s what they do. And then, a genius move this, they sprinkle it with brilliant white flakes of sea salt. It’s a cheffy touch, but a fabulous one. McIntyre tells me that the business emerged out of various lockdown projects. Having cooked in a couple of restaurants in the northwest, he started making the sort of food he wanted to eat. There’s not a lot of reasons to be thankful for Covid. But at least it gave us Little Dumpling King.
News bites
Royal China on London’s Baker Street, part of the well-known Chinese restaurant group of the same name, has lost its liquor licence and been fined £470,000 after 20 illegal workers were arrested there during inspection visits between 2018 and 2024. During the most recent raid in May, almost a third of the staff on duty at the time were found to be working there illegally. There were also questions over pay, with one employee reported to be earning just £6 an hour for a 66-hour week, far below the minimum wage of £11.44. One immigration officer described the restaurant as the “worst licensed premises” in the borough of Westminster. The company has not commented.
Chef Aiden Byrne and his wife, Sarah, who recently departed the Church Green pub in the Cheshire village of Lymm after 16 years, have announced their next venture. They are moving to Knutsford to open a tasting menu-only restaurant called Li-Ly by Aiden Byrne. It will have around 35 covers and be open for lunch and dinner four days a week. Shortly, Byrne will be launching a crowdfunder to help with renovation of the building. Follow him on Instagram for more @chefaidenbyrne.
London is to become home to what is claimed to be the first dedicated Japanese cookery school in the UK. The Tokyo College of Sushi and Washoku, an off-shoot of a similar school in the Japanese capital, will open this autumn in White City. It will offer both full-time and part-time courses, as well as customised sessions for industry professionals. It does not come cheap, however. The full-time six-month professional diploma costs more than £12,000 (sushicollege.co.uk).
Jay Rayner’s cookbook, Nights Out at Home: Recipes and Stories from 25 Years as a Restaurant Critic (Penguin, £22), is available from guardianbookshop.com at £19.80
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on X @jayrayner1