Bao & Bing
Taiwanese
22 Paddington St, Marylebone, London W1U 5QY
£
Part cocktail bar, part Taiwanese street food joint; Bao and Bing is a relaxed and trendy restaurant on the unassuming Paddington Street in Marylebone. Situated almost directly opposite my office, I’ve passed Bao & Bing multiple times, drooling over the menu and peering in at the fun and vibrant interiors. Bao & Bing is the baby of former CEO of Ping Pong: a London Dim Sum chain with 7 establishments, and the food and vibe are inspired by the Night Street Markets of Taipei and Jiufen.
Plastered on the walls are covers of Vogue with beautiful Taiwanese women on them. The toilets have pumping music, with different coloured mood lights (red for girls, blue for boys), and funny cartoons framed on the walls to entertain you whilst you do your business. Downstairs there is a cosy living-room esque room that at first I thought was a novelty place for the staff to chill when they’re on breaks, but what I later realised was actually a room for private hire – ready to transport you to the traditional Teahouses of Xinyi District of the 50’s and 60’s. This place is effortlessly cool and would be better placed in an area like Soho or Shoreditch, rather than the upper-class yummy mummy area of Marylebone.
The menu is a culmination of delicious starters – we got pak choi with oyster sauce and sesame (£3.9), popcorn chicken (£4.5) and prawn tempura (£8.2). The pak choi was deliciously coated in salty oyster sauce and crispy shallots (but no sesame). The stems were still crunchy, whilst the leaves perfectly wilted. It felt naughty despite being a vegetable: the best kind of cooking. The popcorn chicken was good, although could have had slightly crispier batter. I’m not a fan of wasabi so didn’t engage with the wasabi mayo, instead covering mine in spring onion and lashings of the leftover oyster sauce. Saving best till last, the prawn tempura was absolutely sublime. Like, seriously, some of the best I’ve ever had. Encased in a perfectly light a crispy tempura batter were prawns at least 15cm long, juicy and rich, providing the perfect tender contrast to their crunchy exterior.
To follow, we ordered two pork belly bao’s (£5.2) and a crispy shredded duck bao (£5.2). The pork belly bao’s were fantastic, I’ve had some bad bao’s in my life and was put off them for a while, but these truly restored my faith in them. Crunchy pork crackling sat on top of a generous slab of juicy belly pork which was accompanied by pickled mustard leaves, char siu sauce and peanuts. I’m not a massive fan of pork day to day, but I will always go for the original pork bao as I just think this is the way these things were supposed to be. The crispy shredded duck was disappointing in comparison, not that crispy or flavoursome – I actually thought it could have very well been the beef. It was accompanied by the usual cucumber, spring onion and hoisin sauce, and further contributed to my belief that these should stay in a wrap and let the pork bao’s prevail.
Bao and Bing is a seriously underrated place to enjoy absolutely phenomenal Taiwanese food. I have sampled many places like this, and none have left me with quite the same impression. Not only is this place unique and modern with its interiors, the food is insanely good. In times such as these (damn you corona), it’s places like this I miss most: places where I couldn’t even begin to replicate the masterpieces, and where takeaways seldom try.
OVERALL RATING: *****
https://www.baoandbing.com
