Ladies who Lunch! Bao, London

What do you on a Friday when you have no meetings or work, the baby is at nursery?  You call up your favourite girlfriend and head to lunch of course!

I have been meaning to try out Bao, London for a while now I've never had Taiwanese food and I've been dying to go for ages, Reece is the perfect person to go with as she loves food and trying new things just as much as I do. 

Bao, is located on Lexington Street they do have a few branches in London so if you are unable to get to this spot there are others.

Lunch is served from 12-3pm so we planned to go early so that we could work our way through the menu. We arrived just after 12:30pm and was greeted by a long queue across the road, so we jumped on in. Surprisingly the queue went really quickly, probably due to us gossiping and catching up before we entered. 

We took our seats, in the small but airy restaurant our lovely waitress handed us over the menu, with your somewhat of an application card where you number the quantity of food required, being our first time she talked us through the order process and what was available and what had sold out. 

So we got to work and ticked off all that we wanted and waited for our order to arrive. 

First to arrive was our tea, Oriental Beauty a delightful enough tea, tasted pretty much like a green tea, nothing fancy but a good cleanser to start.  Did not have to wait too long for the first dish to arrive, which was the scallop, now you only get one and it is certainly worth ordering more than  as one is not enough as it is truly tasty and fleshy. The sauce that the singular scallop sits in was very zingy/salty and garlicky I do not know why but I really enjoyed it.  Next up was the best sweet potato chips I had in ages fried to perfection, but incredibly soft on the inside, covered in a sweet ketchup, a cross between sweet & sour sauce from your local Chinese shop blended with Heinz ketchup.

Shortly after our fluffy buns were placed in front, the first to be gobbled up was the fried chicken, now I am not a fan of coriander and I know this and the lamb bun was supposed to have it in but, the lovely chefs did not put any in mine. This fried chicken was cooked to perfection, not your normal typical greasy fried chicken, but lovely and crunchy on the outside and full of flavour on the inside, the buns are like little puffs of magic marshmallows, the only thing is that I should have asked for another sauce to go inside the fried chicken bun, such as the sauce on the sweet potato chips, would of been insane (A good insane).

Now I literally saved the best till last not knowingly of course, but the lamb shoulder buns just melted in the mouth, it was just so soft and literally melted in the mouth, no coriander sauce in this, but that was totally fine as the juice from the meat was more than enough and it had a little kick to it with the jalapeno peppers.

All the foodie stuff done, it was time for desert, now I am not a major desert person, but after such a meaty and little heavy feast something clean and refreshing was needed. The delightful sweet crispy fried Horlicks ice cream filled Bao came, I have to say it was scrummy, I did not eat all of the sweetened Bao, which was a little too heavy for me, but tasted really nice, like it had bananas in, but the Horlicks ice cream was gorgeous, fresh and creamy and just what we needed. All in all I was really happy and felt giddy like a child filled with goodness from the Horlicks ice cream.

Service started off really well until it got to dessert for which we had to remind them that we had ordered it, but we can not all be winners. The food was perfectly affordable, a bill for two with a drink you are looking at £50.00, perfect no?! I definitely recommend going and I will certainly be returning to try the rest of the buns?!

Stuffed from our lunch we took a much-needed stroll around Carnaby Street. A great start to an amazing weekend. Have you been to Bao or have any restaurant recommendations?

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                                                                London Mumma xx