We might be winding up the year of the sheep, but it’s really been the year of the bao in Australia. Just when it seemed the craze would have to die down, with pulling the crowd-favourite off its menu last year, the popularity of this little sandwich and Instagram darling just keeps growing.
Sydney's , Melbourne's , Perth's , Brisbane's and every second bar menu around the country has a version of the one-handed wonder. We can’t seem to get our fill of meat wedged in a soft, steamed bun.
The real deal – gua bao – is found in Taiwan, where it was officially dubbed one of the 'Top Five Taiwanese Foods Foreigners Like'. Being one such foreigner, I expected the streets of Taipei to be lined with pillowy buns. Not so. As it turns out, it's much easier to find gua bao in Sydney than in Taipei.
Our craze for these steamed sandwiches seems to have come via the United States, where it had dropped the 'gua', dropped a size, experimented with fillings and became cool.
In its traditional state, the dish has five simple parts: a steamed pillow-y bun, red-braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, peanuts finely crushed with sugar, and coriander leaves.
In Taiwan, gua bao were cooked for employee dinner parties at the end of the lunar year. They are served because they are said to represent good fortune, thought to resemble a wallet stuffed with cash, or the mouth of a tiger, which is why you won’t find them on the streets as easily as other Taiwanese snacks – they aren’t traditionally a street food.
However, you can now enjoy them year round at some of Taipei’s night markets, just not the few that I visited. Stinky tofu and pot-stickers will be at your every turn, but finding gua bao takes persistence. Ask enough, and you’ll be pointed in the direction of Lan Jia Gua Bao, a small family run shop near National Taipei University. A pink order form entirely in Mandarin stands between you and a bao in your belly, and I've applied for credit cards with fewer questions.
Firstly, how many do you want? Herein lies a big difference between the Aussie bao and these gua bao – size. One is plenty. Next question: what is your preferred meat to fat ratio? You have five choices; all meat, mostly meat with some fat, half-meat half-fat, mostly fat, and oh to hell with it, all fat. The gua bao waste no time looking pretty. There’s no addition of red cabbage or grated carrot for a pop of colour, they don’t come on a wooden platter. Out the front of the shop is a messy vat of shredded pork belly beside a steamer basket piled with buns. Your bun comes swaddled in a plastic bag (as does everything in Taiwan), sitting on a worn plate.
Order two, and you'll get two separate plates, two bags. I reached for the squeeze bottle of chilli sauce – old sriracha habits die hard – and received a cocked eyebrow from the grandma sitting in front of me, as if to warn that I was meddling with perfection. Fold the bag back and use it to hold the bun. It's meatier and sloppier than bao as we know it, the soft bread giving way to meltingly tender meat, the mustard greens, peanuts and a scattering of coriander cutting through the rich fattiness. On second thoughts, you do need two.
Ready to go: a pork bun at Lan Jia Gua Bao. Photograph Rachel Bartholomeusz. Source: SBS Food
Lan Jia Gua Bao, 3, Alley 8, Lane 316, Section 3 Roosevelt Rd, Daan District, Taipei. The version at Taipei's Shida Night Market also comes recommended.
