Quick bites: Steam power

In the basement kitchens of Bao London, a squeezed, industrious inversion of the calm, wood-panelled room upstairs, dough is being kneaded to make soft, milky bao buns, ready to be steamed on fragrant bamboo trays.

These staples of Taiwanese food, like everything else at Bao, have been subject to so much research and development that the end recipe is seen as proprietary: "Most other people buy them in but we make ours," says Erchen Chang, one of the restaurant's three partners. "We can't show you how to make them," she laughs. The hot chilli sauce is even more closely guarded - Chang, her husband Shing Tat Chung and his sister Wai Ting come in on their days off to make it in secret.

The siblings, who grew up above their parents' restaurant in Nottinghamshire, started a stall with Chang on Netil Market, east London, two years ago, selling filled bao buns and fried chicken. "The chicken is marinated in soya milk and spices overnight. We have a huge Excel chart [showing] different variations on how the chicken comes out - the temperature, how much milk, how long we fry it," Shing says.

The result is very juicy, succulent meat in flaky, spicy breadcrumbs. The bao themselves look like giant pearlescent shells, filled in the classic version with melting confit pork, reduced pork liquor, hot sauce and crispy shallots and pickled greens, fried in pork-belly fat: comfort food in peak form.

The influence of Taiwanese food is diffuse among London's Chinese restaurants. But Bao, which is backed by the company behind Trishna and Gymkhana, is one of the few places where you can tick off (literally, on the order-pad menu) many of the country's street-food "snacks" (in the £3.50-£7 range).

A neat rectangle of "blood cake" arrives on its traditional lollipop stick, to be dipped in egg cured in white soy sauce, which softens the crunchy mix of dried blood, coriander, peanut and glutinous rice. A clear beef soup is served as a side, like miso, with braised daikon, "so it's juicy, fresh and light", says Shing. "In our favourite bao place in Taipei, you might get an offal soup."

Bowls of turkey rice, the meat slow-cooked and heaped on specially imported rice, are again the product of lavish preparation: "We tried to perfect every element - the sauce is made from the turkey stock, the goose dripping is from Taipei, and we age cucumbers as a pickle."

In little glass thimbles, milk infused with roasted peanuts is "inspired by a milk in Taiwan that's thickened with rice", Wai Ting says. "It goes really well with greasy food."

Greasy food, perhaps, but of the highest order.

Bao London, 53 Lexington Street, London W1F 9AS, baolondon.com

Photograph: Carol Sachs

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