Bao to open first dumpling house restaurant

Taiwanese street food restaurant group Bao will open dumpling house Bao Mary in London’s Marylebone this May.

It will be Bao’s fifth London site, joining Bao Soho, Bao Borough, Bao Kings Cross and Bao Noodle Shop. Bao Fitzrovia closed late last year after nearly seven years of trading.

Bao Mary will be the group's first restaurant to focus on dumplings and trade as an all-day dining venue.

The restaurant will be set across two floors and feature a counter overlooking the kitchen, a dining room with white stools and low tables, and a patio.

Typical dishes will include boiled cull yaw dumplings with mutton sourced from farmer Matt Chatfield; boiled prawn dumplings, scrambled egg and kelp broth; and pan fried mushroom guo tie dumplings.

Other dishes, such as soy braised lu wei assorted vegetables; majian noodles with sesame paste; and beef tendon nugget with burnt chilli sauce, will also be available.

Shing Tat Chung, co-founder of Bao, said: “Dumplings are a dish I could eat endlessly, so bringing our interpretation of a Taiwanese dumpling house into our world is hugely exciting. Sometimes I think we should open restaurants just to serve the food I always want to eat, which is why you’ll regularly find me at Bao Mary.”

Bao was founded by Shing Tat Chung, Wai Ting Chung and Erchen Chang and began as a pop-up project in east London in 2013. The trio opened their first permanent restaurant in Soho in 2015.