It isn’t always a great sign to see a chef striding purposefully out onto the dining room floor. My wife — who, in waitressing job terms, is a multi-tour combat veteran — always talks about having had to essentially be a human shield between displeased diners and the cleaver-wielding chefs desperate to march out for a violent confrontation with them. In my line of work, meanwhile, it often heralds either the awkward offer of a kitchen tour or a well-meaning monologue about regenerative carrot provenance.
Well, late on during my second trip to Mamapen at The Sun and 13 Cantons, a new Cambodian pub residency in Soho, I watched the dread scene play out. Chef-founder Kaneda Pen wandered down from the kitchen before engaging in a tight-smiled conversation with a table of office lunchers who, it transpired, had sent a fried chicken burger back because it looked a bit pink.
Pen, not for the first time during this pop-up’s short life, calmly noted that all meat is temperature probed to confirm it is fully cooked. And he explained, most crucially but not especially appetisingly, that the chicken they use — de-boned thighs marinaded in kroeung, a fragrant, fresh-pounded paste that is the foundational rocket fuel of Cambodian cuisine — contain haemoglobin which, as with some poached Chinese poultry, can impart a faint, rosy tinge.
“Sometimes people take it on, sometimes they don’t,” shrugged Pen later, once I’d asked what had been going on. “The important thing is to have the conversation.”
It felt, to me, like a useful illustration of Pen’s steely determination. Not just to educate and fly the flag for Khmer cuisine at what is, incredibly, London’s only Cambodian restaurant. But to do so in a beer-scented, determinedly casual environment where, well, let’s just say the average customer does not necessarily want to be surprised or challenged.
Mamapen, against these odds, is an exuberant, chest-beating expression of national pride; a fleet-footed celebration of a food culture that has helpful, reverberative similarities to other south-east Asian cuisines but thrums with its own sour punch and indulgent originality.
This is, of course, a site with form in this respect. Formerly the starting point for hit restaurant concepts including Darjeeling Express and Sambal Shiok, the residency programme here is now almost a decade into its run as the springiest of culinary springboards. Which is not to skate past its status as one of the West End’s most abidingly lairy boozers.
During my first visit bodies thronged the sweltering pavement and there was, generally, the screaming, Brat summer chaos of an especially unhinged and overheated Soho night.
Thankfully, the dishes generally shout loud enough to assert themselves. A chilli-laced, technicolor pickle plate has both breathy char and wincing acidity. Pan-fried tofu knots in chilli crisp are a textural challenge but an intriguing, umami-forward one. Panko pork toast, meanwhile, is an unalloyed wonder: golden, breaded cutlets of porcine fried bread, topped with more chilli oil and a drippy fried egg. Pure, cleverly reframed familiarity and lights-out deliciousness.
Mamapen bends a rowdy, low-brow environment to the will of its specific cultural mission
Pen’s unusual professional trajectory — he had a successful career in advertising before he retrained via stints at Aqua Kyoto and roving barbecue joint From The Ashes — is detectable in his approach. Yes, by this, I mean the command of live fire and smoke that is evident in the kroeung-daubed, gushingly juicy BBQ Khmer half-chicken. But I think you can also see the button-pushing ad man, here and there. Tattie mince noodles (partly inspired by Pen’s Scottish girlfriend, Mountain pastry chef Jo Garner) are like the enveloping, steamy nexus between spag bol and dan dan noodles; a warming mound of starch, heat and spud-laced beef that is the uproarious Khmer-Caledonian mash-up that you didn’t realise you needed in your life.
Not everything landed. Pea-strewn egg-fried rice, studded with wrinkled coins of Chinese sausage, felt a touch too fridge-raidy, and I’d have liked an actual pudding beyond the pair of Happy Endings ice cream sandwiches offered.
But I am mostly just in awe of what Pen has done with his residency. Mamapen bends a rowdy, low-brow environment to the will of its specific cultural mission. It uses colour, play and inventiveness to make its mark. And, in a world of too-few Cambodian restaurants, I sincerely hope it is an indelible one.
