Bao Dim Sum House — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Parking is valet, unless you can get lucky enough to get a meter spot. I was waiting for my happy hour group to arrive. Ended up parking myself at the bar for about an hour while I waited. All day happy hour is pretty dang nice. A large beer and large hot sake ended up being less than 10 bucks. Bar area is a bit narrow compared to the dining room, but it's friendly enough and never really went to capacity, but it wasn't dead either. Bar Guy Jeff took good care of me with complimentary Bao Milk Buns (with Yelp Check-In).

-=-Dim Sum!-=- Off the bat, this ain't going to be your mom and pop's dim sum place with the carts going through the aisle. I mean..we are in Mid City, so move your butt over to Alhambra or Westminster if that's what you're looking for. Oddly enough, the food was passable for dim sum. Most dim sum places in my experience are not great. This place ain't so great either, but it's just cool that you can get your dim sum cravings satisfied in the big bad city. You ain't going to break the bank here, and you'll feel trendy and hip at the same time. Our party got the usual suspects: Juicy Pork Dumpling, Pork and Shrimp Shumai, Salt and Pepper Chili Calamari, Steamed BBQ Pork Bun. Any and all of these are as you would get it elsewhere. No complaints on portion, taste, or service. They were super attentive to us even as the dining area started filling up. I probably would just go bar at this place in the future, but larger parties would almost certainly need to go to the...

I visited this restaurant at least five times for the past two months. This particular review was purely about their customer service. My colleagues and I come here all the time. It’s fine that there was no recognition of loyalty. However, this recent experience was absurd enough to make a review. The server Fernando made a 5-minute speech after I complained to him that the sparkling wine I ordered was flat. He said he just opened a bottle last night so he cannot open another one, and laughed about it for a good 4 minutes. He claimed that I had to buy a whole bottle for a new glass. Anyways, he refused to give me a new one. Pretty absurd as I work in the hospitality industry as well. This guy was rude, unwelcoming and racist to me taking advantage that I was nice. We ordered a chicken shumai, and asked for it after waiting for 20 minutes. He said he would check on it. After 10 minutes, we asked again. Fernando laughingly said that he delivered to another table, and said he would offer it right away on the house. When we received the check, the item wasn’t comped. When asked about it, he was very defensive. The entire situation was a retaliation against the fact that he didn’t want to exchange a different sparkling wine when I complained how flat that first sparkling wine was. Go sit at the bar if you visit or ask for a different server than Fernando. Didn’t even want to mention that I had a hair in my har gow when I ordered door dash from this merchant few months ago....

Bao Dim Sum boasts that they bring authentic Hong Kong-style dim sum to the west-side in a chic but old-world atmosphere that's perfect for family dining and dates, yes they do!

I have been obsessed with dim sum these past few weeks so when I was invited to go to this trendy restaurant in the heart of Hollywood, there was no way I was going to say no.

Reservations are a must or plan on waiting for a table, we got there without reservations, on a Saturday around 3:00 and had a 20 minute wait so I can only imagine the wait time for lunch or dinner.

Bao Dim Sum offers a variety of traditional dishes from Bao to dumplings, they even have chicken feet!  Parking is limited and expect to park on the streets with meter parking.  Boa Dim Sum offers drinks in a bar setting however we forego'd the drinks.

We ordered the garlic string beans, they were perfect.

We also ordered the shrimp dumplings which were delicious! The shrimp dumplings had the perfect balance of shrimp to bamboo shoots.  The only I had was the wrapping as when I used the chop sticks to pick up a dumpling, the shrimp separated from the wrapping, I was a little disappointed but also figured out a way to enjoy them together.

Just for a twist of ordering, we ordered the mixed vegetable bao's instead of the traditional bbq pork.  I was with someone who doesn't tend to eat pork so we decided to try something different, I'm happy to have tried these vegetable bao's but I think next time I would go with the...