Home treats from the east

Ben Arnold visits a Korean and Filipino cafe

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SCOUSERS don't have the monopoly on the use of the slang term 'lah', it appears. "It's used all over Asia," Zosima Fulwell, co-owner of Yes Lah, tells me during lunch at her cafe in Didsbury. "It's a colloquial term, like a slang term.

"But yes, a lot of people have come in and said 'are you a scouse shop?!" To confirm, Yes Lah is not a Scouse shop. Its origins perhaps couldn't be further away, in fact, geographically.

Zosima Zosis half British, half Filipino and grew up in Saudi Arabia, while her partner in cuisine Yen is from Malaysia.

The pair met when they were planted next to each other, quite by accident, at the new school food court Hatch on Oxford Road, the collection of shipping containers under the rumbling Mancunian Way. Both of them were just starting out - Zos as Mama Z, serving hearty Filipino dishes and Yen doing her addictive take on Korean-style fried chicken on her stall Woks Cluckin.

They were both just dipping their toes into the street food scene and so naturally became great friends, very quickly, during the hot summer of 2018.

Neither had cooked beyond a domestic kitchen before, so this shared baptism of fire and hot frying oil made them cling together. And they're still together now, with Yes Lah being their first proper cafe.