These shapely buns are a steal
Head to authentic bao place if you prefer substance over style
Bao buns. Up until five years ago, I would not have recognised one in a police line up. Now they have joined the roster of world carbohydrates that appear on menus everywhere.
These buns are not to everyone’s taste. The doubters find them too close to polystyrene for comfort. Being so pale does not help. Baos are made from white flour, egg and yeast, then steamed. They are as pale as a Scot in winter.
The best of them are also tender and pliant in the mouth, the perfect bland foil to a sparky filling.
But in many of the places that have jumped on the bao bandwagon, they are chewy and do taste rather like the plastic packaging they have come from.
Before heading to Sister Bao in Edinburgh’s Newington, I felt I hadn’t given them a fair trial. I had tried the bought-in buns filled with whatever modish bits they thought would fly on social media.
I’d had freshly prepared ones by a relatively inexperienced bun maker, which were superior in terms of taste but expanded in the steaming process and emerged as lumpy bao pancakes.
Boarding the bus that took Nippy Sweetie and myself up the Bridges, I felt sure a restaurant that names itself after a bun must surely be the place to go and eat the ultimate version.
Sister Bao is a takeaway with a room at the back that feels like an afterthought. The menus on the tables are dog-eared and have many scorings out. I don’t mind this level of basic but Nippy is from the tablecloth generation.
And it’s soft drinks only, which did nothing to improve her mood.
She glanced at the grotty menu, requested teriyaki chicken in her bao and left the rest to me.
What arrived was not what we were expecting. The bun itself was splendid, round and sealed with a swirl, sitting in a bamboo steamer. But the filling resembled an economical Irish stew, with carrot
and gravy as the main ingredients. It was mysteriously teriyaki-free and not particularly enjoyable to eat.
My chosen bun, pak choi and shiitake, was much better. The filling was a finely chopped green and black puck, the fresh flavours of the leaves balanced with the deep base notes of the mushrooms.
I could still have used some more moisture. The physics of constructing and filling a bun makes this a hard one to get right but even a well-risen, light bun needs plenty of counterbalance.
There are 14 types of steamed bun – the classic bao – on offer and it was tempting to keep going and find out what all the fuss was about. But that would have meant ignoring the long buns and fried buns. On through the menu we went.
The fried ones – classic gyoza – arrived first. These mini parcels are not something I am normally bothered to eat. They slither around on my chopsticks and then do something similar in my mouth.
Not these babies. They were properly fried with pleasingly golden outsides. The vegetable filling within had the texture of baby food. This is not a criticism. I have, when on my knees with the rigours of caring for an infant, eaten quite a lot of similar purees with no ill effects.
Putting it inside a crisply fried dumpling improves it 100 per cent.
Also this came with a dipping sauce – nothing fancy, just soy – but a swipe of that and we were laughing.
Mindful of my five a day, I added a cucumber salad to our order. This, like the bao, has become a menu fixture and not just at Asian restaurants.
This one was boldly priced at £6 – that’s more than Ka Pao, which is in a different league of fanciness. But it was very good – solid chunks of cucumber in a vigorous dressing of rice vinegar, soy and chilli oil, decorated with coriander stalks and boiled peanuts.
It went particularly well with our long buns, which were my favourite dish.
I suspect that long refers to their steaming time rather than their shape. They resembled edible money bags, filled with a perky mixture of well-seasoned lamb.
The etiquette of eating them was not at all clear. They were slightly too big for a single mouthful and not amenable to being cut in half.
I went for jamming them in whole and hoping for the best – and now have a greasy spot of meat juice on my cream jacket to show for it.
But they were deeply pleasing – savoury, yielding and, finally, moist. As my dry cleaning bill shows.
Sister Bao is the opposite of the deluxe dining experience. But if you value authenticity over Instagrammability, wear something machine washable and investigate the original.