MasterChef food critic Jay Rayner visits post-riot Hanley and finds 'banging flavours'
Top food critic Jay Rayner visited post-riot Hanley and found "huge, banging flavours" at the Little Dumpling King. The TV food critic and journalist, known to many for frequent appearances on The One Show and MasterChef, visited the restaurant on bustling Piccadilly.
Rayner, 58, described the restaurant - founded by chef Rob McIntyre in 2022 - as having a "determination to beat you into happy submission with plate after plate of huge, banging flavours." Writing in The Guardian on Sunday, September 1, Rayner was initially unsure if the venue would be for him, owing to its loud music and vibrant, punky flair.
But Rayner said he had "already decided" he loved the place after witnessing the staff's reaction to the Hanley riots on social media. He wrote: "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."
Rayner wrote staff "stuck up for the multi-ethnic community of which they are a part." On trying the food, Rayner said he "fell in love with them all over again.”
From the restaurant’s ever-changing menu, Rayner tried the pork dumplings, saying they were “full of depth and meatiness,” steamed haggis dumplings, and chicken wings, saying there was “no need to argue” with the menu’s description of the chicken as ‘dead good’.
He went on to try salmon crudo in a soy and green herb oil dressing, saying it “shines under the lights,” before sampling the restaurant’s most expensive dish, steak tartare at £14, which he said was “correctly seasoned”. Rayner also noted the number of veggie and fish options, including jackfruit dumplings with mung bean hummus; a rice bowl topped with pumpkin croquettes and hot sauce; and a plethora of bao.
Rayner said he had over ordered, partly because the prices were “so damn reasonable”. So reasonable were the prices, he writes, that he worries for the restaurant’s profit margins. Rayner added that he also ordered so much food as a way to “show enthusiasm for their efforts.”
Desert for Rayner was a deep fried Mars bar, which he said was fried “sensitively” and sprinkled with sea salt, which Rayner said was a “genius move”. Rayner was told by Rob McIntyre that the restaurant grew out of lockdown projects. He wrote: "There’s not a lot of reasons to be thankful for Covid. But at least it gave us Little Dumpling King."