Bao, the small-plate Taiwanese eatery in London, England, has cracked the culinary code of preserving an authentic street food taste while presenting dishes in a modern way that Westerners can appreciate.
Because of Britain’s colonial history with Hong Kong, China, London’s Chinese food landscape has long been dominated by Cantonese cuisine, and especially dim sum. It wasn’t until recently that cooking styles from other parts of the Greater China region began to shine, and gain mainstream recognition.
That’s definitely been the case with Taiwanese street food, which includes traditional gua bao, on which Bao’s signature dish is based. It consists of an open steamed bun filled with chopped, brasied pork belly and pickled greens, and topped with a mouthful of peanut powders.
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There is also pig blood cake, deep fried chicken, fermented stinky tofu and bubble tea.
The Tainwanese street markets often embrace various regional cooking styles brought to the island from mainland China. The recipes are a legacy of Taiwan’s history, which was mainly driven by conflicts between the then-ruling Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party decades ago.
Until now, there have been some decent Taiwanese restaurants in London, but most of them skewed traditional. Bao was one of the first to challenge the status quo, and add a modern spin.
Erchen Chang founded Bao together with her now-husband Shing Tat Chung, who was her classmate at London’s Slade School of Fine Art. Chung later obtained a master’s degree in design from the Royal College of Art. His sister Wai Ting Chung, who used to work in fashion, joined the couple and the idea for Bao was born.
Chang didn’t have any background in food. By contrast, the Chungs have been running restaurants for generations in Taiwan. Upon graduation, the three went on a road trip in Taiwan, eating their way through the island, and decided one night — in a street market — that they wanted to give the restaurant business a try.
“We came back to London. We tested the recipes and we started doing pop-ups in cafés that were closed by seven. Very quickly we got invited to set up a place in east London’s Netil Market in 2013 and that’s where it kind of blew up — and took over our lives,” Chang says.
At the time, Bao’s Netil Market branch served classic pork bao and fried chicken. Now it also serves rice boxes, ice creams and pineapple cake.
“Now everybody knows what bao is. I was shopping in Waitrose the other day and even they have a food stall there selling bao. But at the beginning, we had to literally explain what we we’re about word by word,” she recalls.
Since then, with the backing of the JKS Group, Bao has expanded to multiple locations in Soho, Fitzrovia, Shoreditch, Borough and King’s Cross. Each one of them has a distinctive character and menu, too.
JKS is a restaurant group run by the Sethi siblings — Jyotin, Karam and Sunaina. They own around 30 branded restaurants in London including Kitchen Table, Gymkhana, Arcade Center Point and Hoppers.
Bao’s Soho outpost on 53 Lexington Street opened in 2015 and was an instant hit among food critics. It has been awarded a Bib Gourmand honor by the Michelin Guide for the past seven years.
The Soho restaurant offers the most classic Bao menu. Must-haves for first-timers include the pig blood cake topped with golden soy-cured egg yolk; trotter nuggets with burnt chili sauce; mapo aubergine rice; Taiwanese fried chicken, and house pickles.
There are also more classic dishes such as confit pork and lamb shoulder baos.
The other branches of Bao play very specific roles in the expanding the Bao London universe.
Bao Borough is inspired by the late-night grill joints, commonly seen in Japan, where people can have a few skewers and drinks before heading home. The Shoreditch branch is their modern take on a traditional Taiwanese beef noodle shop. Both come with karaoke rooms in the basement.
Bao Fitzrovia is a U-shaped bar that comes with a dedicated cocktail menu and serves larger dishes that are inspired by Taiwanese home-cooking flavors such as the half-roasted chilli chicken served with scallion pancake, and the chestnut rice dumpings with salted duck egg and Enoki crumbs.
Bao King’s Cross comes with a bakery and a one-stop solution for travelers to taste some of the most signature Bao dishes before hopping on the Eurostar.
There are beef tendon nuggets; fish black bao, which is cod coated in black batter, and Bao’s take on McDonald’s fillet-o-fish. There is also a salted egg custard sad face bao. A sad face is drawn on the bao, and when it’s squeezed custard comes out of it.
Chang is particularly fond of Bao Fitzrovia’s staff meals as the chefs there would, from time to time, replicate recipes from the famed Taiwanese chef Fu Pei-mei’s cookbook. They’d also prepare special and “warming” dishes on key dates like the winter solstice.
“A lot of our chefs, even though they work at Bao, still don’t know what exactly Taiwanese foods or Taiwanese culture are. So these dishes can really inform and educate them. I also think it’s quite important to experiment with something new and different through our daily work,” Chang says.
There was also another venture under Bao’s umbrella called Xu in Chinatown. It was Bao’s serious take on Taiwanese fine dining, and was so well-received that it was invited to set up a pop-up at Frieze Masters in 2019.
Due to the impact of COVID-19, the Bao team decided to put Xu on hold. Chang says she would love to reboot Xu “many years from now, when I have completely white hair.”
To cope with the impact of lockdown, in 2020, Bao launched the delivery service Rice Error, selling Taiwanese rice boxes. It also launched the online store Convni, which sells a range of Bao’s ready-to-drink cocktails, and Bao make-at-home kits.
People immediately returned to Bao after the pandemic subsided, and the line outside Bao Soho is just as long as it used to be.
“We have very specific ideas in mind of what we want to bring to London. We love to bring kind of different way of eating to London, but all under the Bao lens,” Chang says, explaining the thinking behind each location.
“Take our Shoreditch noodle shop, for example. During the menu development, we not only went to beef noodle shops in Taiwan. We also went to many different types of noodle shops to get inspired by the interiors, like the tiles, the metal bars, the low stools, and the fact that you can see in the corner that the chef is cooking,” she adds.
In terms of the menu, Chang says there is a structure in place for Bao. It begins with Xiao Chi, which means small eats; then there is the bao section; the sides, and maybe desserts.
“Xiao Chi is where we can be more creative. For example, with the blood cake on the Soho menu, in Taiwan, you probably will never come across an egg yolk on top. This is a way for us to show our love for British culture. With baos and desserts, sometimes, it’s a direct recreation of what Taiwanese would eat, like the classic pork bao, and the coriander and peanut ice cream at Bao Fitzrovia,” she says.
The trio’s background in art and design also helped Bao maintain a cohesive vision throughout the years, and that consistency can be felt in the wooden interiors of different Bao locations, the staffers’ white uniforms and the Instagram-friendly dish presentations.
Bao’s logo, a lonely man eating a bao, which was based on a painting that Chang presented at her final show at Slade, has also gained cultural cachet as it was used on merchandise such as tote bags and T-shirts that Bao sells in-store and online.
Chang reveals that she and her partners are working on a cookbook with Phaidon, which is coming out early next year.
A Bao app is also in development, she adds. While Chang declines to give further details, she confirmed that the app is linked to the metaverse and community-building.
Chang says 40 Maltby Street is her favorite place to visit in her free time.
“It’s a wine bar. I normally go there and I’ll try ordering one of everything if I have enough company. Everything there is very seasonal and well-balanced. And then the way that they recommend wine, everything really pairs well with the food. For me, it’s super comforting,” she says, adding that she also loves Mangal, the traditional Turkish grill in Dalston, where customers can bring their own beer.