Two girls, far from home, making the food we grew up on — every festival, every comfort dish, the honest way our mothers made it. Pure ingredients, nothing you can't pronounce, handmade in London.
We came to London for our careers — one of us from the north of China, the other from the south — and found everything except the food we missed. The dumplings folded at the kitchen table on New Year's Eve. The sticky-rice parcels tied for the Dragon Boat festival. The mooncakes that meant the whole family was finally under one roof. You could buy a version of all of it. None of it tasted authentic.
So we started cooking. Not to sell, at first — to feel at home. And between the two of us, north and south, we found we could cook almost the whole country's table: the hand-pulled doughs and steamed buns of the north, the rice, the delicate sweets and festival parcels of the south. Friends asked. Then friends of friends. And we realised something simple and a little sad: there are thousands of people here who miss the same tastes, and almost nowhere to find them made the real, authentic, honest way.
There's an F and a T behind every batch — the two of us — and soft is the word we kept coming back to: the pillowy steamed bun, the snow-skin mooncake, the just-set cheesecake, the lotus root that yields at the press of a spoon. Our mission is simple. To honour every Chinese festival through the food that defines it, and to share a heritage we love with every community in the UK. Pure, honest cooking in its most delicious form — exactly like the food you'd be handed by your mum, or your grandmother.
— the two of us, far from home, cooking our way back.
Recipes kept the old way — the techniques, the timing, the patience our grandmothers never bothered to write down. We did the writing down.
Made by hand, in small batches, the way you'd cook for people you love — because that is exactly who we're cooking for.
Pure, real ingredients. No shortcuts and no excess additives — nothing we wouldn't happily feed our own families.
Chinese celebrations are measured in dishes. We follow the lunar year and cook what each season asks for — so wherever you are in the UK, you never miss the taste of the day that matters.
A small, changing menu built around the season and the next festival on the calendar. Everything is handmade in London, in limited batches — new dishes appear here as we cook them.
Our Mid-Autumn signature. A tender, golden pastry pressed by hand into carved wooden moulds — each one stamped with a flower or character — and filled with slow-cooked lotus-seed or red-bean paste. Baked only in the week of the festival, the way they're meant to be: so the people you love are under one moon, even when they can't be under one roof.
Glutinous rice soaked overnight, wrapped in bamboo leaves and tied by hand, one parcel at a time, then simmered for hours until the leaf perfumes the rice. Savoury with tender beef or chicken and salted egg yolk, or sweet with red bean — the taste of the Dragon Boat festival, folded exactly the way our grandmothers taught us.
Lotus root packed by hand with glutinous rice, braised low and long, then sliced and glossed with osmanthus syrup. Tender, gently sweet, faintly floral — a quiet, old-fashioned sweet that tastes like a slow afternoon in somebody's grandmother's kitchen.
Cloud-soft buns raised from a slow overnight dough, each one pleated shut by hand around a savoury filling of seasoned beef or chicken with spring onion — or sweet red bean, if you prefer. Steamed in bamboo until pillowy. The smell of a weekend morning at home, and genuinely impossible to eat just one.
The mooncake, reimagined cool. A soft, no-bake mochi-like skin — tinted with matcha or left pure pearl-white — wrapped around a silky modern filling and served chilled. Lightly sweet and quietly elegant: the same tradition, in a fresher shape.
A flaky, many-layered pastry hiding a whole salted egg yolk in a cloud of red bean — then shaped, just for the joy of it, into tiny autumn pumpkins with a pumpkin-leaf stem. Serious technique, a little playfulness, and absolutely nothing artificial.
The crisp, buttery "butterfly" pastry from the old Shanghai bakeries — folded into dozens of paper-thin layers and baked until shatteringly light and just-caramelised. East meets west, and the perfect thing to set beside a pot of tea.
Where a London bake meets a Chinese tea trolley. Silky, no-bake cheesecakes folded with the flavours we grew up loving — nutty black sesame, brown-sugar boba, matcha, a dusting-of-cocoa tiramisu. Cool, light and barely sweet, with nothing artificial set inside.
Not a dish on its own — a glimpse of what we start with. Taro and purple sweet potato, steamed plainly so you can see the colour and quality for yourself. This is the calibre of produce behind everything on the menu: pure, seasonal, and nothing added.
Menus rotate with the season and the next festival — tell us what you're craving and we'll let you know when it's in the kitchen.
Whether you're after dinner this week or building something bigger with us, there's a door here for you.
Questions about a dish, where to collect your order, or how to get on the list for the next festival batch — send us a note and we'll come straight back to you.
We love working with people who care about real, homemade food. If you're planning an event or looking to stock authentic Chinese treats, let's build something together.
New festival batches, fresh bakes and the occasional flour-dusted behind-the-scenes — it all goes up on Instagram first. Scan the code, or find us at @so.ft_london.
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