Steadily thrilling: This is the first sit-down restaurant from the hit grab-and-go operation
(Picture: Matt Writtle)On a recent weekday lunchtime, Three Uncles in Brixton Village was causing quite the stir. Expectant hordes swarmed outside this rammed Cantonese roasting meat restaurant’s little blue-liveried double unit. Harried staff fielded repeated questions about how long they thought the wait would be. And a few committed souls had taken to practically flinging themselves at vacated tables like human beach towels hurled at the last sun-lounger.
But there was a flipside. “£10 for char siu?!” said one guy, wrinkling his nose in disbelief as he glanced up at the menu, before turning quickly. An East Asian mum at the table beside mine — out for lunch with her tween daughter — looked at the roast duck, the dim sum and, yes, the (punchily but fairly priced) char siu and rice plate, and laughed. “We could have just gone to Chinatown,” she said, almost absent-mindedly.
These little vignettes strike to the heart of what Three Uncles are up against as a restaurant proposition. Started in 2019 by Hong Kong-raised childhood friends Pui Sing, Cheong Yew and Mo Kwok (the titular uncles) and already a hit grab-and-go operation in the City and Camden, this is their first sit down offering. Its central siu mei offering — those laboriously hung and dried roasting meats that are perhaps one of the more instantly recognisable hallmarks of Cantonese cuisine — is so familiar that people duly bring their own emotional baggage or suspicion.
However, as I learned over the course of a couple of steadily thrilling visits, these misgivings are wide of the mark. Three Uncles really does gain something significant from setting up amid the buzz and bustle of Brixton. But more than that, the modernist brevity of its offering yields cooking of immense focus, skill and real endorphin-spiking intensity. It is ancient artistry, sharpened by its placement in a slick new frame.
That first lunch began, amid the gleaming white tiles and throbbing red neon signs that decorate the very small space, with vegetarian bao: a marshmallowy cloud of chubby, delicately steamed dough, generously filled with mushroom and pak choi and cooked down to a point of deeply savoury vegetal funk and roaring garlic. I had ordered them as a means to gauge the kitchen’s ability when meat (evident in practically every other dish) was taken out of the equation. But some of the other, more traditionally omnivorous choices from the short dim sum section — lamb dumplings in a jolting little pool of black chilli vinegar; wrinkled pork and prawn wontons sopped in chilli oil; springy fish balls bobbing in a curry sauce with a gorgeous, lingering riptide of warm sweetness — continued the established theme of fine-drawn textural delicacy allied with a face-slap of flavour.
The omnivorous choices from the short dim sum section continued the established theme of fine-drawn textural delicacy allied with a face-slap of flavour
Still, all this is mere palate-tickling foreplay for the siu mei. And, happily, Three Uncles’ roasting meats — which include duck, two styles of pork (glazed char siu, crisped siu yuk belly), Hainanese chicken, and even an unholy, cross-species pile-up of the lot — do not disappoint. Whether anointing rice or as part of a Brixton-only noodle soup dish (built upon sturdy cords of lai fun and a shimmering, nuanced wonder of a duck broth), they have profound depth of flavour, judiciously weighted sweetness and speak, with each luscious slice and greedily slurped nubbin of bone, to centuries of tradition and patient mastery brought to bear on a single inexpensive plate of food.
The curt drinks list features one circa £20 bottle each of red, white and rosé, while there is no pudding beyond a relatively expansive range of teas. But there really doesn’t need to be. And, again, it highlights the wholly justified, baller-level confidence that characterises what the founding team here are trying to do.
On my second visit, I made my way there through a Brixton Saturday night of duelling soundsystems and crowds of stumbling day drinkers. Three Uncles felt like its own unflustered little island-state; a slice of Chinatown working to its own frequency and finding a way to be a vessel for both the past and the future.
