Mum's Jamaican dumplings and vegan delights - why Ardwick's ARMR Store is far more than just a cafe
13.03.2022 - 12:01
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Raphale Evans’ mum Joanne makes fried dumplings for him six days a week. Hundreds and hundreds of them.
He sells them at his cafe and health food shop ARMR Store, in Ardwick, in the sight line of the Apollo.
He’s tried to make them for himself - he’s seen them being made often enough - but somehow, he just can’t get them to taste the same.
“I’ve tried, but there’s some things that mums do the best,” he says.
Plus, it means that his mum is part of the business that he pours everything into - time, money, emotion, heart, soul. And that’s a nice thing for him.
Raphale - Raph - opened ARMR Store on March 30, 2019. He gave up his job as store manager of Predator Nutrition in the Arndale Centre - he’d worked for Holland & Barrett before that - in December of 2017, and thought he’d be open by the following January. But it didn’t work out like that.
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“I was maybe a bit naive when I moved in,” he says. “I thought there might be things like light switches. A tap. But no. Just brick. When I look back, I'm just really, really grateful for how things have happened.
"Although they were very, very difficult. Because it's been an education.”
Currently, he and his partner Lucy cook all the food - it’s spectacularly good vegan Caribbean - with dishes like jackfruit burgers, warming curries, and Jamaican classics like rice and peas and patties, and, of course, his mum’s dumplings (which are truly delicious, as with everything they serve up).
They cook it all at home in Mossley, in just their regular domestic kitchen, before transporting it every day to Ardwick. Four burners, an oven, that’s about it. “It’s not ideal,” he laughs. All the food is sourced, bought,