The Bubblewrap team folds the traditional egg waffle (gai daan jai) into a funnel and fills it with ice cream, sauces, fruit, chocolate chunks or biscuits.
Bubblewrap opened in 2017 and its waffles were an instant hit. Police initially had to erect barricades to manage the queues of customers. Then a video about the snack went viral online, gaining more than 20 million views, and the visually appealing dessert has since become an Instagram sensation.
“I grew up on Hainan Island in the south of China. We did not have these waffles when I was a child,” says Wu. “And my business partner and co-founder Tony is from Zhejiang province, where they were not well known either. But in the last five years, I would say, they have become popular all over mainland China. I’ve always been interested in food and marketing, so we decided to start a business selling waffles.”
The business began in 2015 with a market stall serving a limited menu of waffles with toppings including cream, Nutella sauce, salted caramel, banana and peanut butter – flavours they enjoyed in China.
In 2016 they trialled the ice cream waffle at a food festival and it was an immediate success. The team put in a bid for a lease on a shop in Soho’s Wardour Street with the Shaftesbury Group (landlords of many restaurants in Soho and Chinatown), who were delighted with the concept.
“Young brands like Bubblewrap have redefined dessert parlours, serving a street-food product rooted in tradition yet appealing to the vibrant world of social media,” says Julia Wilkinson, portfolio and group restaurant strategy executive at Shaftesbury Group.
Another young entrepreneur from China selling regional Chinese street food in premium London locations is Bin Li, a 30-year-old restaurateur from Xian, Shaanxi province. He wanted to introduce his region’s casual cuisine, and opened London’s first Xian restaurant, Murger Han, in 2014 close to Euston and Kings Cross railway stations, where there is a high density of Chinese students and a steady stream of day trippers. A second Murger Hanhan outlet opened in 2016, in Mayfair.
The restaurant is famed for its murgers, a nickname Li gave to the Xian street snack rou jia mo, which is a toasted bun filled either with soft pork belly cooked with a mix of 20 spices, or slow-cooked, tender beef.
“I think it’s the oldest burger in the world,” he says of the sandwich, which is believed to have been around for more than 2,000 years. “People in Xian eat rou jia mo once or twice a week. It’s as much a culinary symbol of Xian as a roast dinner is for a Brit.”
Li aims to reproduce dishes as close in flavour and texture as possible to those in his home city, so does not modify recipes. “I am not going to start putting lettuce in my murgers,” he says.
Li’s Euston restaurant is compact and bright: large windows let in plenty of natural light; the tables are placed closely together. There are no fancy decorations or tableware. Service is swift, sometimes brusque, and guests eat quickly.
“We can turn around a meal in 20 minutes,” Li says. “Perfect for people who have a train to catch or students on their lunch hour.”
As well as murgers and bowls of noodles, the Euston branch offers side dishes of stewed pig’s ears and chicken feet – stained dark brown with soy sauce and scented with star anise. “The Euston branch is more Chinese style,” Li explains.
In contrast, his two-floor Mayfair branch has low lighting and more space. A full-sized replica terracotta warrior greets guests at the entrance; brick-patterned wallpaper evokes the ancient city walls of historic Xian, and guests linger over their meals.
Li spent two years searching for this site and was adamant he wanted to be in Central London.
“I liked this area [Mayfair] because it is posh,” he says, candidly.
“I did not want Chinatown. I felt my authentic Xian food would get lost among the other Chinese restaurants. As I want to attract more Westerners at this branch, there are no claws [chicken feet] or ears on the Mayfair menu.”
Xian cuisine has quickly become popular with Londoners. Several restaurants have opened since Li’s pioneering Euston branch, including Xi’an Tradition in North London, Xi’an Biang Biang noodles in East London and, most recently, Master Wei in Bloomsbury, Central London.
Like the Bubblewrap team, Li recognises the importance of social media as a marketing tool.
Although his murgers are popular, his real hit with the Instagram crowd is a hand-pulled noodle dish, topped with pork, egg, tomato and chilli oil. It has become an online tradition for customers to lift noodles from the bowl with their chopsticks before taking a photograph and hashtagging it #NoodlePull.
British-born Taiwanese siblings Shing Tat Chung and Wai Ting Chung, and Taiwan native Erchen Chang, have also noticed Londoners’ appetite for Chinese meat-filled sandwiches. Taking inspiration from Taiwanese gua bao – a steamed bun traditionally filled with stewed pork, peanut sauce and fermented greens – the trio decided to introduce this dish and other, more creative interpretations of gua bao, to the British capital.
“Erchen was born in Taipei, so she was brought up with it,” Shing Tat Chung says. “We went travelling in Taiwan just after we had graduated, and the first gua bao we tasted was at Lan Jia Gua Bao,” he says, referring to a popular stall in Gongguan, a shopping district in Taipei.
“The combination of savouriness of the braised pork, sourness of fermented greens and sweetness of the peanut powder in a soft steamed bun was something we hadn’t tasted before, and sparked our discussions and ideas around BAO.”
The partners started out with a stall in Netil Street Market – described on their website as “a six-seater shack in a car park in Hackney” – specialising in steamed buns. Named BAO Bar, this venue opened in 2014 and still serves customers once a week, on Saturdays.
From this month they will have three more permanent structures. The first, in Soho, opened in 2015 – and was awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand (for competitively priced, delicious food). Their second opened in 2016 a few streets away in fancy Fitzrovia, and the third, just about to open, is south of the Thames in Borough, and will have a karaoke bar.
Each venue is very carefully styled. The BAO logo, a monochrome cartoon of a hunched diner cramming an overflowing steamed bun into their mouth, is so distinctive and popular that it now appears on merchandise: T-shirts, bags and chef jackets, sold through their online shop.
At BAO Soho it is a mix of tourists that have come specifically for bao, or regulars that have been coming since we opened. We have one person who has counted 54 visits
“We always had the desire to create spaces and experiences inspired from travels around Taiwan and Asia. Our six-seater bar was our take on the small golden gai bars in Tokyo. So when the opportunity came up for a permanent space, it was a great opportunity that was hard to turn down,” Wai Ting Chung says.
The venues each offer customers slightly different experiences. Soho BAO is spare and minimalist in design, with a short menu of buns and xiao chi (small snacks, including pig blood cake, trotter nuggets and Taiwanese fried chicken). Fitzrovia BAO is in a grand-looking town house – with sharing plates, buns and smaller snacks. And the upcoming South London restaurant? “BAO Borough, our Grill & Karaoke Restaurant – is something a bit more carefree, fun and loud,” Wai Ting says.
Much like Bubblewrap and Murger Han, each of the BAO offerings attracts long queues of customers, and they come back for more according to the team.
“At the BAO Bar, we have a lot of regulars that come to us week after week and have been doing so for years. At BAO Soho it is a mix of tourists that have come specifically for bao, or regulars that have been coming since we opened. We have one person who has counted 54 visits to Soho.”
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: A feast from the East
