When you look for Wonderbao, don’t give up if at first you don’t succeed. It’s a tiny shop at the end of a small arcade off A’Beckett Street in the city and it can be tricky to locate initially.
There’s another entrance down an alleyway, Literature Lane.
Tucked in behind the city campus of RMIT, Wonderbao specialises in bao, steamed bready buns with a variety of fillings that sell at a very reasonable price and feed many of the students and workers in the area.
The restaurant opened last August and with its bench seating along the front window and milk crates in the laneway outside to perch on if inside is full, it has quickly gained a solid following.
Order at the counter (where you’ll see enormous steam baskets in which the bao cook) from a short menu that features buns such as choi bao ($2 each with mushrooms, tofu and vegetables) or nai wong bao ($1.70 each with egg custard).
The friendly staff will soon bring you your order.
These fluffy buns are filling, so order two or three to start with, depending on your appetite, and take it from there.
The char siu bao ($2) — you may have heard these referred to simply as steamed pork buns — are served in a recycled cardboard container.
The bao are hot and very fresh.
The shredded pork meat has a subtle sweetness to it, it’s delicious. Other bao fillings consist of delicious chinese sausage.
The chicken bao is dense with mince chicken meat filling and big chunks of shiitake mushroom.
The other section of the small menu includes gua bao, like a sandwich where the same style of bread wraps around the fillings.
The roast pork belly gua bao ($3.80) was one to fight over. Its well-cooked tender pork belly was dressed with pickled carrot, cucumber and hoisin sauce.
As was the fried silky tofu gua bao ($3.80), which was sweet and salty with pickled mustard, sweet soy and crushed peanuts.
Drinks are limited to juices or their housemade soy milk, but they match the food well.
So seek out Wonderbao, and don’t give up. It’s well worth the effort.
