Mama Mui’s Chilli Oil

Hi, my name is Mei. I am the founder of Oh/​Mei/​Dumpling.

By day I am a busy mum­my of two beau­ti­ful lit­tle dumplings. By night I am a dumpling mak­er and at week­end you’ll find me at var­i­ous pop up mar­ket and food events around Greater Manchester. 

My love of Chi­nese food start­ed when I was a lit­tle girl liv­ing above my family’s Chi­nese take­away. Every­day, with­out fail, my mum would cook us a fam­i­ly meal which would con­sist of dif­fer­ent Chi­nese dish­es served with rice. I use to watch over her shoul­der in com­plete awe and eager to learn from her. 

All my life I’ve been brought up eat­ing dumplings. It was always our go to snack after school. My mum hand­made them all the time. I use to watch my mum make each dumpling, hand pleat­ing them one by one and back then I thought it was impos­si­ble to learn from her. Fast for­ward to 2016 I decid­ed that after suf­fer­ing two mis­car­riages I thought YOLO — I quit my very safe and secure job in edu­ca­tion and decid­ed to take a leap of faith and fol­low my life long dream ambi­tion- to be hap­py, to set up my own dumpling busi­ness and be my own boss. That same year my mum trained me up to make dumplings, it took me months and months just to learn the basic skills and even today I am still learning. 

The day I did my first ever street food event was the day I found out I was 4 weeks preg­nant. The most log­i­cal thing to do was to stop work­ing due to all the man­u­al and heavy lift­ing, set up and break down. How­ev­er I did quite the oppo­site, I worked hard until I was 30 weeks preg­nant and I give birth two weeks later. 

After tak­ing five months off I returned back to work. That year I won two awards. Stock­port Best Street Food 2018 and Man­ches­ter Best Street Food 2018 I couldn’t believe it. My mum was cry­ing with joy for weeks, she was so proud of me. I also recent­ly won Man­ches­ter Best street food 2020.

Dumplings served with my mum’s chilli oil was always a win­ner, the per­fect com­bo. Every­body always want­ed extra chilli oil on their dumplings. My mum had to make large batch­es to keep up with the demands. I am so proud to now have my mum’s chilli oil all jarred and labeled up. 

My mum had a hard life back in Hong Kong, she was a farm girl work­ing out in the pad­dy rice fields with no option to have an edu­ca­tion. My mum has inspired me to remain ground­ed, be hum­ble and every­day to work hard.