Andrew Wong’s family has been making bao for decades. His grandparents first relocated from China to Vietnam, then they made their way to Australia in 1978 with their 9 siblings, including Andrew's dad. The family started selling their bao to friends and restaurants, then Andrew's dad opened a takeaway pork bun shop, Tak Hing, in Coburg, before moving it to Braybrook in Melbourne, where it is still operating today.
When Wong decided to follow in his family’s footsteps, he was inspired by Melbourne’s takeaway coffee shops. “Everyone else doing buns were Chinese restaurants also selling noodles, rice, dim sum, everything. I wanted to set up something where I would do the one thing and do that one thing really well,” he explains to SBS Food.
Andrew Wong is the third generation of his family to make and share his delicious bao with hungry customers. Source: Audrey Bourget
Wong has adapted his family’s bao recipe, tweaking it to make it a bit fluffier.
When he opened in 2012, he wasn’t sure it would take off. His only goal was for more people to know about pork buns, partly to help his family’s business grow. It looks like it worked because bao have taken off in the last few years, appearing on many Australian menus, from modern Asian restaurants to trendy cafes.
Why do people keep coming back?
Wonderbao is not a place you just stumble upon. “We’re out of the way. It’s not that I wanted to be in a laneway, it’s because the rent was cheap! But it worked on my side because Melbourne is all about laneways and hidden gems,” Wong says.
The main items on his menu are Hong Kong-style bao – the closed stuffed buns – and – folded on the filling like a taco. Wong has adapted his family’s bao recipe, tweaking it to make it a bit fluffier. “My grandpa eats the bun and says ‘It’s not a bun, it’s too soft, it’s too fluffy, not dense enough’,” he says, laughing.
The Hong Kong-style bao come with a variety of traditional fillings like barbecue pork, egg custard or a mix of egg, shiitake mushrooms and Chinese sausage.
The traditional gua bao with braised pork, pickled mustard greens and crushed peanuts is Wong’s favourite, but most customers gravitate towards the roast pork belly with hoisin sauce, pickled carrots and daikon. Whether your vegan or not, the fried silken tofu gua bao is also worth a try.
For something more out there, try the deep-fried bao with pork floss or the burger bao with soft-shell crab or cheesy portobello mushroom. After collaborating with , Wong even added an ice cream bao to the menu.
Andrew Wong's favourite filling is the braised pork with pickled mustard greens and crushed peanuts. Source: Supplied
Despite these new additions, Wong likes to keep the menu simple at the takeaway shop. He takes advantage of his presence at markets to try new things, like a truffle bao for . For his pop-up at , a hawker-style market in the CBD, he introduced a DIY crackling pork belly kit that you assemble yourself, putting in just the right amount of sauce and pickled veggies. Messina, also a stallholder there at the moment, is frying Wonderbao’s gua bao and filling them with gelato.
Today, Wong manages Wonderbao with his wife Tina. They have an off-site production kitchen to keep up with the demand at the shop, festivals and pop-up, as well as for doing wholesale.
“There’s a Chinese saying going something like ‘When something is yours, it will be yours. When something is not yours, it will never be yours’,” he says. There’s no doubt that this bao business was always his.
4/19-37 A’Beckett Street, Melbourne (best access via Literature Lane, off Little Latrobe Street)
Mon – Wed (8 am – 6 pm), Thu – Fri (8 am – 9 pm), Sat (11 am – 4 pm)
