New Eats: Bao Down

With the opening of Gastown’s swaggering new Bao Down, we can finally welcome the dedicated bao shop we’ve been ripe for.

Consisting of a fluffy white rice-flour bun, bao are a quintessential Asian comfort food, and here they’re used as vessels for chef Greg Edwards’ encyclopedic knowledge of harmonious flavour parings (tamari-braised shitakes with avocado and ginger-peanut sauce fill the Vevo Bao, while the Bao Chicka Bao Bao’s lemongrass fried chicken with palm sugar-fish sauce glaze and garlic-scape mayo uses frying techniques from Korea and the southern U.S.). It’s nice to see a menu with as many pork belly-based items as innovative veggie ones (kimchi-laced grilled cheese with napa cabbage slaw, please) and ingredients will rotate with seasonal availability. With raw brick and graffiti skater-causal décor and enthusiastic, tattooed staff, the spot has a clubhouse atmosphere and seems predestined for post-party fortifications.

Get there late and tipsy enough to justify a heap of pork belly sisig, chicharron (Filipino pork rind), kimchi and garlic mayo topped double-fried fries; crunchy, salty, pungent and fatty, they’re worthy of worship. —Adrienne Matei

Bao Down, 12 Powell St., Vancouver, 778-379-3611, baodown.ninja