Beastie Baos, Kongs: 'You dim sum you lose some'
Bao may well be at the forefront of culinary progress elsewhere in the country, but they are certainly not here.
According to this article in the Evening Standard, the rising popularity of bao in the UK marks a moment of culinary progress for our country. Why? Because Wetherspoons has started selling them. I couldn’t tell you what is on the menu in Wetherspoons - a point of great personal pride - so I shall have to take the author’s word for it.
There is no doubt bao has entered the zeitgeist. For those looking to familiarise themselves with the phenomenon, Xanthe Clay wrote a comprehensive round-up of supermarket iterations a week ago. According to her article, Ocado has seen a 45 per cent rise in sales of the Chinese steamed buns year on year, which I think says more about the people that shop at Ocado than anything else.
The problem with food trends is that everyone, qualified or not, thinks they are fair game. Bao have serious catfish potential; it’s easy to make a fluffy bun bursting with pork belly or fried chicken look incredibly enticing for your Instagram even if it tastes like crap. There’s only one way to find out; which is how we found ourselves sitting in a near-deserted Kongs of King Street for the Beastie Baos pop-up on Sunday evening.
Kongs is first and foremost a bar. When you’re in a bar late at night, the dirty dusk lighting, permeating toilet stench and general petri dish stickiness are lost to shots of tequila and elbowing your way to the bar. It’s not a natural dinner destination, and at 6pm such qualities are much more present.
The current menu is made up of the subsection of food that those who are mid-King-Street-night-out will find somewhat satisfies the beer induced munchies when washed down with yet another pint and an incoherent game of table tennis. More fool us for going in sober in the search of culinary creativity.
Pork (£6.75), chicken (£6.50), tofu (£6.50) and ice cream (£6) are your choice of fillings. Fries (£4), kimchi fries (£8), salt and pepper hash browns (£7.50) and Tso’s wings (£9) are your choice of sides.
Usually such a short menu is a promising sign, and I’m over the moon to see that salt and pepper seasoning is finally making its way down south. We’ve been using it as seasoning for everything in the north for years, we even bathe in the stuff in lieu of the posh southern bath salts. Adding it to hash browns is genius and I’m only annoyed I wasn’t the one to think of it. With chips or fries, the surface area to seasoning ratio allows for more flavour - with a bit of tweaking this could be huge.
The bao themselves were under-proved and thus all too ready to seal your mouth with clag; take too big a bite and you risk gagging yourself for a good few minutes. Silence descended, but then there was little to say about the fillings anyway. The tofu was too much batter, too little seasoning and pushed into mediocrity by a pleasantly acidic carrot and daikon pickle.
Pork belly is a stalwart on the bao filling scene. Its chewy, fatty savouriness is the yin to bao’s sweet doughy yang. At Beastie Baos, slow braised pork belly is sandwiched with a sort of panko apple fritter, crushed peanuts and coriander. If we were on Love Island in 2018, you might say ‘it’s my type on paper’, only to find out that your new match is all style and no substance. The texture was fine, the flavour was - well - what was the the flavour? Forgettable. God knows where they managed to find such insipid apples to fry. The Bible would tell a very different story if the snake was trying to sell this.
And then the chicken. This we had hope for, as Beastie Baos is from the team behind the much-loved Wings Diner across the road at Small Bar which was widely regarded - myself included - as some of the best fried chicken in the city. But no, the stuff was dryer than January and nothing it was tucked in with redeemed it.
In a state of denial, we went across the road to sample a Wing’s Diner fried thigh with Korean sauce in between our savoury and dessert bao - and were gutted to find that, too, more fowl than I recalled. Have I missed the mushy batter memo? At least the wine over there - supplied by Kask I believe - is considerably more drinkable.
Once more across the King Street cobbles for vanilla ice cream and hot honey in a deep fried, cinnamon sugar coated bao, which was the best of the lot but still needed work. The ratio was far too high in favour of cheap frozen dairy. Two games of table tennis later and we decided to cut our losses.
The search continues. Woky Ko used to do a good bao back in the day, but in my opinion Daily Noodles has failed to live up to their predecessor. Viet Kitchen on Stokes Croft can take a bao as the glimmer in the dark. I haven’t tried the vegan creations of Apocalypse Bao but they have been known to pop-up at The Scrandit which has a near perfect track record. Otherwise, if you’re looking for consistently excellent steamed sandwiches, you’d best get on the train to London.
Bao may well be at the forefront of culinary progress elsewhere in the country, but they are certainly not here.
Beastie Baos, Kongs, King Street, BS1 4EF
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour