Rising Star Irene Li, Andy Li and Margaret Li of Mei Mei - Biography

If Irene, Andy, and Margaret Li were destined to grow up and run a family restaurant together, they didn’t know it. Growing up in Brookline, Massachusetts, the siblings were exposed to a strong food culture, with family gatherings and a city-proximate life. But no one, from the get go, had culinary collaboration in mind.

Instead, each sibling went their own way, with Andy, the oldest, ending up in the industry on the front-of-house end, working as a manager at Legal Seafoods and later Harvest, in Cambridge. Margaret, or “Mei,” stayed officially outside of the food world, even as a study abroad gig at London’s Imperial College found the young MBA intermittently hosting pop-up dinners with a friend. Irene, the youngest, found herself immersed in food the earliest, studying her junior year at The Mountain School in Vershire, Vermont, learning how to grow and harvest her own organic produce.

Irene would go on to Cornell where, like her sister, she would host a pop-up restaurant. But eventually, as families do, the three came back together, with Margaret returning from London as Irene finished Cornell and Andy began longing to ply his customer service skills at his own establishment. Enter Chef Max Hull, a relative newcomer on the Boston restaurant scene with his refined sense of flavor and sophisticated technique ripe for growth. At the time, food truck love was burgeoning in Boston, and the group founded vehicular Mei Mei Street Kitchen (April 2012) and brick and mortar Mei Mei Restaurant (November 2013). Accolades, including Eater Boston’s “Restaurant of the Year,” followed quickly—and haven’t stopped—as the siblings plus Hull combined shared memories, polished skills, and a backbone of uncompromising ethical sourcing into the aggressively creative, accessibly fun, entirely unexpected family restaurant.