Taiwanese cuisine is marked by slow braising, abundance of flavours and use of fermented vegetables. It’s hearty, warming, savoury and tart.
Flavours that take time and care to get right are being brought to Sydney by Bao Dao Taiwanese Kitchen.
Here are all the details:
BAO DAO
- ADDRESS
shop 8/376 Victoria Ave, Chatswood NSW 2067
This casual dining spot might be serving up food fast, but nothing about the cooking is fast.
Bao Dao’s famous beef noodle soups are made from hours and hours of braising in a broth that takes hours and hours to create.
Taiwanese food in Sydney isn’t a common find nor choice for most, but Bao Dao is bringing it to the masses.
The noodles I tried was served with some bok choi, beef brisket, beef tripe and beef tendon. The dark broth was packed with flavour but not oily or greasy. The beef was tender with some bite still to it, and the noodles were delightfully chewy. The tripe wasn’t tough and the tendons were so soft. You just knew hours of work were spent on every meat component.
Delicious.
Another famous Taiwanese dish is Pig trotter rice with slow stewed pork. This dish is another that takes hours of slow cooking to achieve.
The pig trotters have been stewed for so long that the whole thing comes apart with the first bite! It’s an absolute indulgence. Every bite is sticky, gelatinous and fatty.
The dish comes with a braised egg and the rice is dressed with the pork stew sauce.
The whole dish is a very savoury, delicious meal that makes you want more.
But I didn’t just try the mains, I also got some light bites because Taiwanese food culture loves grazing throughout the day.
(A continuous stream of small meals and snacks from convenient street vendors seemed to be how many young Taiwanese people approached their meals while I was travelling there…)
I ordered a plate of pig ears, dumplings and their soft bao; pork belly gwa bao.
Pig ears are notoriously hard to cook because they tend to be very tough and hard. However, in Chinese and Taiwanese cuisine, pig ears are slow cooked until the toughest ingredients are turned into delicious starters.
This cold dish was slightly spicy, crunchy from the cartilage but very appetising. It’s a great starter before a main.
The soft bao is a nice on-the-go snack you can quickly grab. The bao was soft and served with a slab of pork belly which was tender and stuffed with a mix of vegetables and pickled mustard greens.
Bao Dao dumplings are bigger than average and made fresh everyday in store. Every dumpling was filled with fresh juicy pork and the wrapper was a good thickness. Not too thick it feels doughy, and not too thin that the whole dumpling falls apart when you pick it up.
Highly recommend.
