A DELICIOUSNESS OF DUMPLINGS
Carlos Amato sticks to the pot at Greenside’s Baohaus restaurant
Sigmund Freud would have platzed if he could put today’s food culture onto the couch. Who knows what he’d diagnose, but it’s clear that the showdown between the raging id of our desires and the whiny superego of our dietary orthodoxies is laying on some gourmet psychodrama. Demons of dough are rising from the depths to throttle Tim Noakes. Smoked-meat armies are on the march, seducing our daughters and mooning our GPs. The repressed is taking over the menu. It tastes like Eden, but it’s cooked with hellfire.
You’ll feel me when you bite down into a Chairman Bao at Momo Baohaus in Greenside, Johannesburg. It’s a cloud-like bun stuffed with a dreamy tripartite alliance of umami, sweetness and freshness: pulled lamb, hoisin, crushed peanut, QP mayo, spring onion, fried onion, cucumber, toasted sesame. The Chairman Bao presses so many buttons at once that you have to reboot yourself.
Momo Baohaus has been flying high since opening in June. Joburgers are short of inventive Asian-fusion joints, so they’re hoovering up its Korean-anchored menu. (The comparators are Great Eastern in Melville and So Yum in Hyde Park, while Koi’s branches in Rosebank and Sandton are very good but a little pricey and poncy.)
The narrow dining hall of Momo Baohaus is studiedly relaxed — Brooklyn or Barcelona with a touch of Seoul. Yellow mid-century desk lamps sprout from the walls over minimalist woodiness, and the crowd is sexy and well-travelled. No licence as yet, so bring your own — the modest prices are even more appealing as a result.
And some of the dishes are as decadently eclectic as those dreams you can’t even tell your shrink about. Go for the Szechuan prawn wonton — not for the crustaceans themselves, which are totally bossed by the accompaniments: ginger, pickled shitake, crushed peanut and the key ingredient, a buzzy Szechuan peppercorn oil.
Our Gyoza kimchi potstickers weren’t as fresh from the pan as the sizzling ones that passed us en route to some fellow patrons — send them back if they’re not crispy — but the plum sauce was on the money.
Consider investing in the Szechuan bowl: a lovely chaos of spicy kung pow chicken (or beef or tofu), cashews, that peppercorn oil, mint, chilli oyster sauce, and a wonderful ramen egg with a yolk so fluffy it practically cheeped at us. All this abundance was balanced by a therapeutic mass of wokked greens. And the Bangkok bowl was even better, boasting a fresher, crisper, thinner sauce, with the added blessings of mint and pickled shitake.
As you ingest these delights, you may find yourself experiencing parallel thrills: the mortal sin of deep-fried abundance, plus the instant absolution of freshness and complexity. This is how to resolve inner conflicts. Obey both urges, simultaneously, at one table. And don’t invite your shrink.
139 Greenway, Greenside, Joburg http://momobaohaus.com