Mr. Bao — Restaurant in New York

Some updates in November. As I order more from this place, it disappoints me more. I ordered the beef fried rice a lot but the quality is not consistent! Today I ordered the rice and sesame balls. Both of them were poorly done. The fried rice does not look fresh😖. The sesame rice balls was over-cooked so it’s pretty hard to chew.

My reviews earlier when they just opened:

It’s a new Chinese restaurant and has become my go-to lunch place.

I have ordered the rice bowls a lot and soup dumplings and sticky rice ball (one of my fav Chinese snacks/sweets).

The flavors /tastes are quite authentic! I’m from China.

I have solid reasons to take one star off. Not because I don’t like the food but I think there are some small improvements needed. They are

1. the rice is a bit too hard especially the multigrain one, the chickpea was not cooked at all. Personally I like my rice to be hard rather than too watery but not uncooked!
2. the pork belly is bit disappointing! The meat was dry. The flavor is good tho.
3. highly recommend adding more soup where the meat was cooked in to the rice so the whole bowl will be more tasty!

I will come back to try other things for sure. Nice...

Move over David Chang cause Mr. Bao has come to town! I’ve been looking at this restaurant for a year and finally ordered a self picked tasting menu and I’m sad I haven’t ordered sooner! This place is great! The Gua Bao was spot on and delicious! Writing this thinking about the short rib one has me salivating 🤤 . The rice bowl was good but the true star was the Yuzu Apricot Peach dipping sauce. It was HEAVENLY! Lick the inside of the container kind of good. I hope I can buy a jar next time and put it on a bunch of things. Anyway. The food was good. Fair prices for portionings. Staff was friendly and the restaurant was clean. A family was ordering when I came in and someone from their table was making recommendations; thanks to him I got the spring rolls that comes with this Yuzu sauce ! (THANKS guy!) and there wings are a definite add on to any order! Crispy, flavorful, and need a bigger order size! Need those by the bucket! 🍗 It’s a cozy spot and I encourage everyone...

To Mr. Bao: please manage your online food delivery tablets better so customers are not kept waiting and receiving cold, soggy dumplings, and stuck together noodles.

My order was stuck in preparation purgatory as my courier was waiting outside the restaurant for over 20 minutes. I finally called the restaurant asking if my order was ready, and the employee on the phone argued with me saying my order was ready for a long time and "no courier was outside". This is untrue, as I can track the courier GPS location from the app (they were outside the restaurant) and I could see in my app that the order state was still considered in restaurant prep-- in case you weren't aware, restaurants need to indicate on their food delivery tablets when orders are ready for pickup, otherwise couriers will not know the order is ready. I had to call the courier myself to notify them to pick up the order. All said, my order was extremely delayed, and I certainly won't be ordering...