Fu Manchu: Dim Sum, Clapham North ★★★★★

Fu Manchu Clapham: review
If you can forgive the rattle of the trains that thunder over Fu Manchu, Clapham, and learn to love the grungy, opium-den-meets-disco-lights aesthetic, this latest addition to dim sum restaurants in Clapham is a great little spot for sampling a huge range of delicious mouth-sized dumplings, or sipping on some adventurous and spicy cocktails.
Choose between steamed, fried and baked mouthfuls of dim sum: the Har Gau king prawn dumplings with sticky translucent skin explode with sweet flavours aplenty; the Cha Sui Bao honey barbecue pork bun combines a soft and crumbling outer dumpling and sticky, meaty insides. We're particularly keen on the salt, pepper and chiliil broccoli, or Chaeo You Sai Laan Fa, which offers up tender and moorish broccoli stems that can be eaten with your fingers.
Fu Manchu also offers a choice of three sharing menus, for those who want to sample even more of their rich asian flavours, and those more interested in drinking cocktails than eating will find a vast menu of drinks, flavoured with oriental spices – some of which arrive shrouded in flames.
The venue is – like its cocktails – hot and adventurous, living up to the badly behaved 1930s fictional Fu Manchu after whom the restaurant/cocktail bar/nightclub is named. Don't expect to be in for a relaxing evening, but do expect entertainment, music and a rip-roaring, '30s themed night.