Bao

Bao? Wow. This slick former street food operation brings Taiwanese cuisine in from the cold, with plenty of hit dishes and a great tea selection. The transition from street stall to permanent site is not an easy one. Many successful street food traders simply lack the skills for staffing rotas, spreadsheets and hitting slim profit margins. That’s why the three founders of Bao cleverly teamed up with more experienced and deeper-pocketed operators – the team behind Trishna and Gymkhana – to smooth the journey from market pop-ups to a permanent Soho establishment.

This Bao-Trishna marriage appears to be blissful. The décor is sleekly Japanese, with casual yet efficient service. Most notably, the tantalizing cuisine is new and inventive. While it is inspired by Taiwanese street food, the kitchen goes well beyond those bounds. In New York, Chef David Chang achieved something similar with Korean food: the Momofuku founder's steamed buns became a cult culinary item. Chang addressed a new generation of novelty-seeking urban customers by subverting and recreating cuisine.

Bao is London’s equivalent of Momofuku’s Ssäm Bar. The restaurant’s name derives from gua bao: fluffy white steamed buns, in this case filled with braised pork, sprinkled with peanut powder, and yours for £3.75. Other sorts of bao (bun) are more slider-like, such as little burger baps wrapped around soy-milk-marinated chicken, sichuan mayo and kimchi. There’s even a dessert bao – made with doughnut batter and filled with Horlicks ice cream – that echoes the malted cereal milks at NYC’s Momofuku Milk Bar.

Yet buns are only half the story. Xiao chi (small eats) are given equal prominence, reflecting their cult status in Taiwan, where much culinary innovation comes from street food stalls. Pig’s blood cake – a neat little block topped with a lightly cured egg yolk – tastes of soy sauce and black pudding. Vegetarian dishes are enticing: oyster mushrooms are cooked with jade-coloured fragments of century egg; intensely savoury dice of roasted aubergine have a slight garlic kick.

What lifts this diner from merely great to sublime is the drinks list. Sakés, artisanal ciders, well-matched beers and hot oolong teas vie for attention alongside creations such as foam tea – a chilled light oolong artistically topped with foamed cream. Arrive hungry; leave happy. But be warned: Bao is small and doesn’t take bookings.

Google rating: 4.3/5

Phone: 07769 627811

Address: 53 Lexington St, Carnaby, London W1F 9AS, United Kingdom

Service options: Dine-in · Kerbside pickup · No-contact delivery

Prices: £11-25

Website: http://www.baolondon.com/