Bao Bar – Chinese | London E8

Cuisine: Chinese

Price: Cheapish (depends on how hungry you are)

I like this place. There are three items (£3.50 each) on the menu (with one extra on the specials board which was £4) and if you’re not a meat eater, it goes down to a choice of one. The items are cheap, but the portions are the size of a child’s fist. Unless you have a stapled stomach, one or even two items would merely whet your appetite.

What they do, they do well. The bao was soft and fluffy. The meat filling it was tender and tasty; if you’ve ever had braised pork belly in a chinese restaurant, that’s pretty much it (with a sprinkling of garnish). I also had the fried chicken which was juicy and crunchy, with a fermented bean paste based sauce (I think) squirted on top.

This place is doing something very different to pretty much everyone else in the area (that I came across), and that is refreshing. Sticking to a few items on the menu has meant that they’ve concentrated on doing what they do well. That counts for a lot.