Bring on the Bao Bei!

I'm going to be honest right off the bat. Bao Bei is a happening place for overpriced, under-portioned food BUT the flavors are amazing, the crowd and decor is retro chic cool and their drinks are decent. We started the night off with a pitcher of their summer 'sangria-like' drink which was tasty and refreshing on a hot sweaty summer day!

First up, we had their Crispy Daikon Cake which really is a glorified radish cake you can get for $2.50 from any dim sum place. Tasty, but not tasty enough for me to go back for it. That is my new rule. You know it's good if you're already thinking about going back and ordering it again next time.

Their Shao Bing on the other hand is a must try. Braised pork butt (delicious sounding, I know) with Asian pear, pickled onion and mustard greens sandwiched in between crunchy sesame flatbread makes for an inventive do-over resembling a Vietnamese sub. Genius.

However another pet peeve I have of tapas type places are how menu items are portioned. In the perfect world, every tapas place would consider the amount of people in your party and account for that when splitting up the dish or counting the number of pieces per dish. It just really sucks when you go in a group of five, and the dishes are made for four. Seriously people, we would pay the extra $, just don't make two people suffer by having to share what is already a tiny piece of food!

Their pork potstickers were good and standard - the usual.

Their Warm Eggplant with a soy, garlic and ginger sauce was surprisingly very un-plain and satisfying for my taste buds. However I am a big fan of eggplant so I could be a bit biased.

Another creative dish they offer is the Mantou steam buns with braised beef shortrib, hoisin, scallions, pickled cucumber and roasted peanuts. A gloried 'cha sui bao' for those who know what I'm talking about. Perfectly marinated and easy to devour.

Now this dish really caught me off guard. First off, because I'm Chinese, I don't usually like to go out for Chinese food or order Chinese vegetables, BUT this Pearl Bok Choi dish with a ground pork and black bean sauce is to die for! I couldn't get enough of that juicy goodness the bok choi was swimming around in!

And my favorite dish of the night - the crispy pork belly with sauteed soybeans, Asian cucumber, chili, garlic, pickled red onion, tamarind and star anise tomato sauce. Let's face it, any item on the menu that says pork belly, or pork butt, or pork fatty anything is expected to be good. This one did not fail my theory.

And we ended the evening with a refreshing fried banana with lime and coconut sorbet dish. Oh and I might as well add that we REALLY ended the night with some Twilight action.

All in all, I might return here again one day if I'm feeling like a high roller, or if I know it's being paid for but probably wouldn't spend my own dime eating at this glorified dim sum joint for hipsters. I'm not bashing the food though, it's delicious, I just have to start watching every penny on my dine outs!