Yo! This Mama is squids in and offers a fun buzz

There’s no snobbery like food snobbery, and it can take many forms. There are the people who like to buy cakes from Avoca, not because they are short of time, but because they feel it says something about them. It does, but we won’t go there. There are those for whom the word ‘organic’ is everything, even if the produce is ancient and dried up. There are others who simply have to cook from the latest cookbook sensation, which somehow always seems to mean Ottolenghi. Some people refuse to buy food in Aldi or Lidl, more fool them. Others boast of never letting their children go to McDonald’s – mine, oddly enough, never liked it nearly as much I do.

Then there are those who get rather sniffy about Press Up Group, owner of so many restaurants (and a few hotels) that I have lost count. But it’s more than 60.

It’s the old ‘it can’t be any good if it’s that big’ theory which, frankly, doesn’t hold water. Press Up has some excellent restaurants: Doolally and Tomahawk are impressive examples. But where Press Up shines, in my view, is in creating fabulous bars and wrapping eating facilities around them. The bar in Roberta’s is a thing of beauty, the food (at least when I last visited) not so much.

It’s really about an immersive entertainment experience so, naturally, it’s not for everyone. Especially if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t really notice the décor, the ambience, even the location because you’re concentrating so hard on what arrives on the plates. Okay, I’ll put my hand up.

One of Press Up’s most recent openings has been Mama Yo on

Camden Street, a vast restaurant (it’s 335 square metres for heaven’s sake!) lavishly designed (think trees, wall hangings, elaborate light fittings, comfortable armchair-style seating) and, to my surprise, absolutely hopping on a Tuesday evening.

My arrival reduced the average age by multiple digits and upped the male presence considerably. It seemed that every table was occupied by groups of between four and ten twentysomething females. Whatever Press Up is doing here, it certainly works if measured by the old bums-on-seats metric.

So, yes, I’m not entirely in my element but the staff are lovely. A special commendation for my waitress, who seemed to be able to juggle multiple busy tables with the greatest of ease and humour. The Negroni from yet another fabulous bar may have taken its time, but it was good. The dishes I chose, dining alone, were something of a mixed bag but even I came to feel that this was not really all about the stuff on the plates.

The menu is pan-Chinese, in the sense that there are lots of dishes familiar from takeaway menus, with a bit of other parts of Asia represented by things like Mongolian beef. You’re sorted for kung po chicken, sweet and sour pork, chicken satay, and seabass with ginger and scallion.

But you also get the kind of buzz that you simply don’t find in your typical Chinese (by which we usually mean Cantonese) restaurant. Being

MY ARRIVAL REDUCED THE AVERAGE AGE AND UPPED THE MALE PRESENCE CONSIDERABLY

on my own, I could only scratch the surface but I can report that Mama Yo does salt and chilli squid as good as anywhere. Properly tender squid, crisply encased, with the mildly fiery zing of chilli and the slight crunch of very briefly cooked onion.

Pork soup dumplings were good but I have been spoiled by eating some of the best in the business at China Sichuan in Sandyford. Essentially, each dumpling is filled with some seasoned pork mixture and a little jellied stock that liquefies when cooked. You have to eat them carefully, as an apparently mouthfriendly dumpling may contain ‘soup’ the temperature of molten lava. But it’s worth it for the strangely pleasant sensation as you bite through. Mama Yo’s are definitely worth ordering.

So is the hot and sour soup (€9.25), although it could be spiced up a bit. I think a smaller bowlful, as served in most Chinese restaurants, would be a good idea. It was appropriately glutinous, generous with the silken tofu and sliced mushroom and nicely sharpened with black rice wine vinegar, but I was defeated by the time I’d got halfway through. It came to the point where the sourness sat on everything else. This is why modest bowlfuls are in order.

Crab fried rice sounded good. More than good indeed, as the menu promised ‘tempura softshell crab’, a combination that sings to me ever since I had it for the first time in a restaurant in Melbourne when I was in the first flush of youth. As it turned out, this dish wasn’t nearly as good. Oily rice, heavy oil-saturated batter, a thick margin of which seemed to surround the crab. It was to real tempura as I am to Nijinksy or Boris Johnson is to the Dalai Lama. Deeply unattractive and all the more disappointing when it had promised so much. I really do think restaurants need to be very careful when using the word ‘tempura’. It does not mean battered senseless.

Anyway, I can see that Mama Yo can be fun and I would go back for the squid. As for the demographic, I suspect I’m from a different galaxy far, far away.