Bao Bao — Restaurant in Portland

I wanted so badly to love this, I've been following their progress for awhile and was excited to stop by. Service was friendly but a bit confused. We came in when there was only one person in line ahead of us. We ordered a steamer basket, congee, wonton soup, dumplings (we requested the meat and wanted half fried and half steamed -per their suggestion, not trying to be extra, but they gave us all mushroom and 3 fried and 4 steamed 🤷‍♀️), and took our number and sat down.

The dumplings came out first. They were on the bland side and I don't even prefer salty foods. Congee came out next and was also bland -- I wish they would offer shaved ginger and/or toasted garlic on the side/in the congee. It definitely needed chili oil which I searched for and thankfully found. I know congee in it's most basic form is bland...and served with salty fish or egg or something flavorful, so to have this without much taste was not for me.

We had one bun come out next, the mushroom bao. They took our number away which confused us since we ordered a basket of 3 different bao. We went and asked and they were sold out of the pork one we ordered, I'm not sure what happened to our curry chicken bao order but I know there are kinks to work out with a new opening! However they weren't aware we were missing anything nor were they aware we weren't told anything was sold out. So had we said nothing, we would have been short the 2 bao we paid for.

The curry chicken was good. The wonton soup was good -- delicate in flavor but good.

I might come by again in a few months to let them work out their process a bit and to try the pork bao. I ended up dumping soy sauce into the congee to finish it -- something I've never done in my 30+ years of eating it anywhere/at home.

Everything was very fresh and the bao dough was very fluffy. Things tasted freshly made, it just...

Finally tried this place today. There were 3 tiny tables outdoors, and fortunately it wasn't crowded. Decided on the wonton soup with two bao. There were 6 bao flavors available, 4 vegetarian and 2 with meat. I tried both meat options. The pork bao was outstanding, and the chicken curry bao was okay, but nothing remarkable.

The wontons in the wonton soup were fantastic. Some of the better wontons I've had in Portland. They were so good I managed to ignore the fact that the soup had nothing going for it other than the wontons - there was little flavor to it. The soup was presented on the menu and priced like a main entree, but it wasn't all that filling.

The meal cost just under $20, and didn't leave me full. I probably could have finished another entire soup. However, there were some real outstanding parts to the meal, so I would call this a decent value for the money. I'm a huge fan of all dumplings, so I could be biased. If you're not personally enthusiastic about bao and wontons, the place might leave you wanting.

They do offer most of their dumplings frozen if you want to enjoy them at home.

I'd definitely come back, but I'm not so impressed that I'll become a...

We waited about 10 minutes before being acknowledged by any of the staff, which was a little off-putting. That being said, when somebody did arrive at the counter, they were friendly and engaged.

You can sit at the counter and watch The bao being assembled and cooked, which was fun for our kids.

The restaurant seemed mostly clean, though the soup spoons at the table we sat at had some debris of some sort on them.

The time between placing our order and getting our food was very minimal, and everything came out looking and tasting great. There was plenty of chili oil, sambol, and sriratcha at the table.

Pricing was a little steep, but totally in line with the area.

I'm a little annoyed by the amount of email spam I've gotten from them - especially since I didn't provide them with my email address, or consent to receive any promotional materials... I provided my phone number on their Square terminal when I paid as the method I wanted to receive my receipt, so I'm sure they got my email address from Square which didn't make me feel very good about Square's data privacy practices, but that's not super relevant to this place so I can't really hold that...