Gone are the days when trucks were meant for trucking stuff around while listening to classic rock. From L.A. to London, trucks have become mobile purveyors of high-end comfort food, with tweetable names like DOGZILLA (hot dogs), MEAT WAGON (burgers) and KEBABALICIOUS (err, not salads). And now, Beijing is in on the action. Feast your eyes on… BAO HOUSE.
Before we go on, let’s clear something up. Beijing has had food trucks for years. We practically invented them. Stick a snazzy logo saying “SPUDCYCLE” on the side of this guy and it won’t be long before it gets a Buzzfeed shout-out.
BAO HOUSE, as the name infers, is all about gourmet baozi (steamed buns filled with meat and / or veggies). Four varieties, in fact, each with corresponding catchy name and cute character graphic. Our favourites were Bao Thai Thai, filled with thai pork, red curry and kafir lime, and The Baofather with its wagyu beef and black truffle innards.
That’s not all: Bao House hawks a pair of sandwiches made with mantou, those generally tasteless white orbs of steamed dough that confound foreigners with their popularity. A brave move, actually (though this eater would have preferred his toasted).
What Opposite House have done is compensated for the plain bread with full-on, flavour-packed fillings: who could say no to the Beastie Bao (ahem), filled with a 1cm thick slab of meltingly soft braised pork belly? It’s unctuous in the extreme. The other, less successful offering has ground pork with a sort of Thai lemongrass and chilli dressing. And you can sass-up any of your purchases with a DIY selection of sauce bottles.
The best thing about Bao House, though, is the setting – they have commandeered a sunny patch of al fresco real estate on the north side of The Opposite House, with plenty of shaded table seating beside the truck. It’s a hip spot for evening drinks and snacks (the truck has Slow Boat beer in bottles and on tap, plus wine and spirits), and we are told a DJ will be spinning baozi-friendly tunes on weekends.
Bao House will be parked at Opposite House until late October, and opens daily between 12-9pm, with DJ from 5.30-8.30pm Friday and Saturday and 3-6pm on Sunday. Sign up to the Bespoke Newsletter (at the bottom of our homepage) to feast on more informative food nuggets like this every single month.
About the author: Tom O’Malley is Propaganda Secretary at Bespoke Beijing. A lifestyle journalist, guidebook author, glutton and bon vivant, Tom is a tireless crusader for fine food, hospitality and tourist experiences in China’s capital.