BAO Kings Cross — Restaurant in London

Traditional Taiwanese? No way. The bao wasn’t well-made. It stuck on my teeth - good Chinese bun bread should not stick on teeth. But the pork belly was ok. It had a hint of Huadiao along with other spices. Smacked cucumber was not smacked. If they don’t smack it but calling it smacked, it means they don’t really know why smacked cucumber is smacked. And it’s toooooo salty. Waitress said it’s popular. Not sure why tho. Probably because ppl nowadays like overtly salty food. The guinea fowl rice was the least traditional. Why was it minced rather than diced? What can you taste out of minced meat? There is a reason they do diced pork originally. A good bowl of 鹵肉飯 packs the texture of the pork and the fattiness from the pork skin.

The place is a cashless restaurant. Actually I later found out that whole commercial complex is cashless. But no notice or whatsoever upon the entering of the restaurant. When I finished and paid I was told they only accepted digital money (eg cards). I told them several times upon my entering I wasn’t told it would be cashless. I said if I had known I wouldn’t have come in anyway. They gave me apologies but insisted I pay by cards.

I said I only budgeted cash for this London trip so not planning to use my card. I only had 20 and 50 pound notes. But my meal was just below 17pound. The supervisor said they could accept my cash, ie. Supervisor would card pay my meal I cash pay to her. But the problem was they could not provide any changes. I didn’t want to pay 20 pounds for that meal either (why? Was it worth it? I didn’t eat that much anyway). So they were actually implying that I would have to pay at least 20 in that case (but was that even my fault? I shouldn’t have been the one to get penalised). At the end they made me going around outside to get changes but sadly all shops in that cluster were cashless. So I returned and told them so. At last the waitress Suzanne took my 20 pound bill and gave me her tips as my changes.

I didn’t even understand why I was penalised to run around for changes and Suzanne definitely should not have been put in the position to use her tips to cover the changes her company should have paid. In a situation like this, the meal has to go free for the customers. At least this applies to cashless restaurants in other geographical contexts.

Everything was super small portion. In East Asia, actually Taiwan to be exact, these are all snack portion. 15 pounds for a set of three snacks? Overpriced.

Suzanne is the only person I liked about the restaurant so I left her part of the change as tip for her. I gave 3 stars for service and all three of them...

Uncooked chicken was served to us!!

This is our first time visiting any Boa location. We walked by one of their restaurants a few weeks ago so when we walked by again, we decided to check it out. We were sat down right away and our server quickly came over to explain the menu and then left on her break. This isn't a problem but it would have been nice for her to take our order before or to ask another server to take over while she was gone. It took a long while before we were able to flag someone down to take our order.

We ordered 2 beef short rib baos, the boiled cull yaw dumplings, and the yellow chili chicken skewers. Everything was tasty, however, when we bit into the chicken skewers, we noticed they were a little undercooked. We pointed it out to a server (who wasn't our original server) and he quickly took it back to the kitchen. Another woman, who I assume was the manager, came out to us and apologized and said they are making another one for us and it will take about 20 minutes, so we waited. When the second plate of the chicken skewers came out, the server said it was cooked for extra time just for us. We noticed that the chicken was charred on one end so we believed them. We started eating the chicken and it seemed to be cooked better but by the time we got to the last few pieces, we noticed that one of them was almost completely uncooked. We immediately called our original server over and explained to her what happened with the first chicken and that this second plate we got, which was apparently cooked for extra time, was completely raw. We said we would just like it removed from the bill and that we would like to pay for the rest of the meal. She took it back to her manager and came back with the bill shortly after. I asked her if there was a reason why the second plate was undercooked and she said she had no idea and she just gave the plate to her manager. No one apologized to us for that second plate. No one came to us with an explanation on why the chicken was uncooked even after sending it back for a second time. We paid for everything else we ate and left.

The food (that is properly cooked) is tasty, however, I recommend fully inspecting your meals if you wish to dine at this restaurant, especially the chicken. I really hope we do not get sick from...

As a Taiwanese who not able to go home for almost two years, I was very looking forward to this. Sadly the experience was really not up to the level of the price tag. Let's leave food to the last. What's wrong with their staff training? I went there in mid September, it's not easy to book but strangely the cafe was only half full when we were there. Even it's only half full, the table service was all over the place. Staffs were apparently recruited based on their looking; they aremostly young Caucasians. Many of them looked totally lost; they gathered in front of the kitchen watching maybe some order screen but all looked puzzled. The guy who supposed to give me my savory soy milk (I waited for it quite a long time, it came very late for unknown reason) gave it to next table; my next table told him that they have had it. So he took the food back to kitchen, despite I tried very hard to draw his attention. The dishes came with a huge time gap for no special reason, as said there were not that many customers so I really don't know why. Any Chinese restaurant in Chinatown can run much more tables way better than this. Now to the food. Bacon pancake is terribly salty; for some reason the chef decided to put soysauce inside the pancake roll first. No, Taiwanese don't do that. We add saysauce when needed, depends on personal taste. Bacon here is also much more salty so all together it's a overly salty dish. The Bao with sausage and hash browns is tiny, and you cannot find hash brown without glasses on. The savory soy milk was not bad, small portion but not bad, however again the chef decided to put in chili oil for customers. Why?? The customers have no right to decide they like chili or not? The dish came with separate chili oil; we can add it if we want to! The Taiwanese black tea was good, but I guess that doesn't need much kitchen work. In sum, service not good; staffs were polite but didn't do good job. What's the point then? The food was, despite good quality in general, too small portion, overpriced, unnecessarily over seasoned. It's a trendy place for internet influencers to take photos, or if you want to have some foreign but actually...