Bao Dumplings & Bao Tea 寶餃寶茶 — Restaurant in Kenilworth

Nice casual option for a few specific Chinese dishes that aren’t usually found in this area, but how much you enjoy it will depend on your expectations of Asian cuisine.

We spotted Bao Dumplings while driving and decided to give it a try. We were surprised to see soup dumplings, and I was pleasantly surprised to see mapo tofu (a spicy tofu dish) as well. Note that my wife and I really enjoy Asian cuisine which affects our reviews of Asian restaurants.

For science, we ordered: Soup dumplings Fried pork & leek dumplings Mapo tofu (includes rice) Dark roasted oolong bubble tea with tapioca and 30% sugar

Soup dumplings: For a local shop, it’s nice that they offer soup dumplings. But I think the presentation makes them a problem because as you can see from my photos, they serve the soup dumplings overlapping and smashed together in a small rectangular plastic container. This makes it so that even careful manipulation didn’t let us keep the soup in the soup dumpling, despite the dumplings’ skin being a bit on the thicker side. Otherwise, it’s nice having this as an option but if I could make a suggestion to the restaurant it would be to find a circular or different presentation method so that more people can enjoy the soup dumpling with the soup inside.

Mapo tofu: (Reader, remember that I have a subjective taste for what I like in mapo tofu)You can taste something of a savory bean sauce which I like. There is a light sensation of heat, less than tabasco, I’d say. I would not come back specifically for this.

Fried dumplings: Of the items ordered, we enjoyed these best. These are closer to bite-sized dumplings rather than the longer form factor of Japanese gyoza. They’re served with soy sauce and a mustard sauce of sorts. I didn’t realize till later that they also offer a paid chili oil which maybe could’ve helped, but we didn’t notice it until we almost finished eating.

Bubble tea: watered down and likely not steeped long enough to present the tea flavor. Tapioca was chewy.

The staff were friendly and helpful. Restaurant was clean and decorated (and true to their description of being a casual eatery rather than fancier dine in). Parking can be tricky but free in a small shared strip mall lot off main road.

Hoping...

There was a sign that said food would be a 20 minute wait but it ended up being over an hour. The staff was clearly under a lot of stress and unorganized in getting orders ready. My wife and I ordered bubble tea, soup dumplings, and pork buns. Our tea sat on the counter for about 10 minutes before anyone realized they were ready to be given to customers ourselves and others included. Following a 20 minute wait we were given our tea which was by this point a little watered down we were told it would be another 20 minutes for our food. The tea was thankfully still good but I ordered it with mango jelly and was given mango popping bubbles instead, when I asked if it was in error they told me those were the jelly’s. We left and came back after around 40 minutes and the food was still not done. Eventually our food was given to us, the soup dumplings were stuck to each other and ripped when trying to grab them as well as lukewarm.

The pork buns were raw and immediately thrown away. After an hour of wait for bland dumpling and very raw pork, I wish I could ask for a refund.

Truly a terrible experience, if you're in the area, go to Big Apple Pizza, they are right next door and cook their food, are delicious and have short...

The food is ok but no better than every other place and definitely not better than going to a more authentic sit-down place.

The worst thing about our visit was how overwhelmed all the workers were. We waited 25min to get our bubble teas that had been sitting on the counter ready to go for about 10min at that point. When they finally gave us the teas, they told us the rest of the order was going to take 20min more. We told them we would stop by another store and come back to get the rest of our order. When we came back 40min later, they didn’t have anything ready and it almost seemed like they had forgotten about our order. They told me it would take 3min max and after another 15min we got what we paid for over an hour earlier.

The atmosphere of the place is also terrible and sterile. Doesn’t feel comfortable at all and for the long waiting times they have you’d assume they’d have comfortable chairs at least. What made it worse is them constantly coming to us asking us for our order number and not being able to remember anything.

We cannot recommend Bao Dumplings & Bao Tea in...