Shopping bag.

Have you ever had that type of voyage that has kickstarted a ripple of inspiration? A wave of desire? A siren call to try something new? Founders of BAO London, Erchen Chang, Wai Ting Chung and Shing Tat Chung had this exact life-changing trip ten years ago as a post-university jaunt in Taiwan. Erchen, having grown up in Taipei, took the recently graduated respite as a chance to show her partner and his sister around the haunts of her childhood. A huge part of this trip, as you may have guessed, turned out to be bao. Almost unheard of in the UK until about ten years ago, bao is thought to have originated in the Third Century in China during the age of the Three Kingdoms. The delicacy is now popular worldwide with many a spin being taken in the search for the perfect bao bite.

Bao: a type of yeast-leavened filled bun typical in many forms of Chinese cuisine. A perfect bite; soft, white, fluffy, steamed and often filled with tantalising softly spiced meats.

With rather contrasting childhoods, Erchen in Muzha, Taipei, and Shing and Wai Ting in Nottingham, the common denominator that seeped into all three upbringings was food. Eating, drinking, mingling, bringing together family and friends–it was the food of their heritage that was an integral part of their respective youths. Family life and tradition exude from their stories and, as Erchen recounts the life of BAO and how the restaurant universe came about, the interwoven thread always comes back to kin. BAO London, now five ventures strong, started as a small idea that proved, steamed, and grew into the ambrosian empire that it is today. A cafe pop-up event became a stall at Netil market, where the team was later approached by the JKS restaurant group about opening their own permanent site. The triumphant evolution of BAO has been admired by many. However, we must start right at the beginning to understand the full, bountiful story.

Having grown up in Taipei until the age of 14, Erchen, Creative Director of BAO London, spent her formative years watching her grandmother exceed and excel in the kitchen. She tells me that her “Grandma is the star of the family who would prepare everyday for a table of ten. It always feels like she is cooking for a banquet. She works really fast and always manages to have a cold dish, a braised dish, a broth, and stir fried veg.” And, if having one family top-chef is not enough to create a desire to launch oneself into the restaurant world, the family of Shing and his sister Wai Ting has also been soaked in the hospitality gene. Their maternal grandfather Pai Wan Tang started his London life as a pot-washer at Choice restaurant on the King’s Road in Chelsea, after a month-long solo boat trip from Hong Kong, and worked his way up to head chef at Golden Palace. After this stint in London restaurants, Pai Wan moved to Nottingham to open his own Chinese restaurant, kickstarting the Chung-Chang hospitality journey.

Despite this pre-written destiny, both Shing and Erchen eschewed their parent’s ambitions in the first instance by attending The Slade School of Fine Art in London, instead of pursuing a more ‘business-minded’ path. Their parent’s feeling of missed opportunity continued when the founding three started BAO as a pop-up event and then a stall in Netil Market. The feeling of disappointing a parent is customary to many of us, and as Shing explains, “Not long after we started BAO, travelling to Hong Kong with my father, we visited his home village north of Tai Po and he had to explain to the head of the village that his kids couldn’t get jobs anymore”. Translating a creative career to driven family members is one thing, but attempting to explain your logic and vision whilst “selling steamed buns in a car park”, is another! In the introductory pages to their new book, Shing describes this as a feeling of “wanting to succeed in the language that is common to our family.” Of course, any terse feelings melted away when work commenced with the BAO journey, and both sets of parents rallied behind the cause, supporting in any way they could.