It’s been a while since I last went to Baozi Inn, Soho, not since we’d moved away from London four years ago. I took advantage of a recent London citybreak to visit the London Bridge branch, just a couple of minutes walk from ever-popular Borough Market. Our hotel was just round the corner from the restaurant; just as well given how cold it was that December weekend!
Some of the Northern Chinese menu is familiar from previous visits, but it also offers lots of dishes I hadn’t tried before. Seated in a small corner upstairs, I ordered with eyes bigger than my belly! Spoiler alert: we didn’t finish it all but asked for leftovers to be packed and nothing went to waste!
Baozi Inn offer a great range of dim sum and I’m always keen to enjoy a range of their steamed dumplings. The Southern Prawn Dumplings (£5.90) were big, juicy and with great flavour.
A popular order is a basket of XLB with flavours including sweet corn, mixed seafood, pork or spicy pork. We ordered Pork Soup Xiao Long Bao (£15.90), a portion of six. Delicate pink wrappers contain a generous amount of soup and juicy, well flavoured pork – perfect both with and without the ginger and vinegar dipping sauce.
Perfect for those who can’t decide, we went for the Multicolour Traditional Dumplings (Jiaozi) Served With Chilli Oil (£10.90) which comes with a mix of vegetable, chicken and pork jiaozi. The pork filling is made with pork, Chinese leaves, ginger and spring onion; the vegetable dumplings contain carrots, fungus, cabbage and glass noodles; and the chicken ones are made of chicken, ginger and spring onion. Make sure you mix these up to coat them liberally in the delicious chilli oil.
There were three skewers in the portion of Chicken Skewer In Caramelized Sauce (£12.50) and they were tasty enough, with strong spicing, but we found the chicken a touch dry and the skewers didn’t have as much caramelised sweetness as I anticipated.
We were already pretty full by this stage but I’d already ordered a portion of Legendary Pock Mark Minced Pork “Mapo” Beancurd (£13.80), one of Dan Dan Noodles With Minced Pork (£12.50), and a side of Steamed Rice (£3.20).
The Mapo Beancurd was redolent with Sichuan peppercorns and chilli, and had a lovely savoury boost thanks to the Sichuan preserved mustard greens. I found this dish pretty fiery but addictively delicious.
In retrospect, the Dan Dan Noodles had too similar a flavour profile. The sesame sauce was quite strongly flavoured with chilli oil and Sichuan peppercorns, so whilst this dish was also very tasty, it wasn’t the best choice to contrast against the Mapo Beancurd.
It’s probably obvious from the photos that this was far too much food for two people, even two greedy ones, so we happily took home leftovers to enjoy the next day for lunch. With a lychee juice and a couple of Tiger beers, plus 12.5% service our bill came to £103.60 but if you don’t over-order as muchas I did, you can have a tasty and filling meal here for quite a lot less.
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Please leave a comment - I love hearing from you!17 Comments to "Baozi Inn, London Bridge"
Oh my, my mouth is watering right now!! I love this kind of food and wish we had more good places like this in Italy. The southern prawn dumplings and the prawn soup dumplings sound like something I would enjoy. The mapo beancurd looks interesting, especially with that Sichuan sauce. it looks spicy!
I am similarly lacking in places like this in our new home in rural Wales! I feel for you!
I do understand that problem of having eyes bigger than your belly when you visit restaurants like Baozi Inn that offer so many great options. But leftovers are always great to take home. I usually try to pass on steamed rice and not fill my belly up that way. A good option for a return visit to London.
Good call to skip the rice, I tend to get it if there’s something saucy, like the mapo beancurd, but yes we could have done without it here!!!
Baozi Inn looks like a wonderful place to dine. The pink wrapped dumplings look tempting as well as the multicolored ones. I think every Chinese restaurant has its authentic recipes. And those chicken skewers look yummy and so does the Dan Dan noodles. And I like when you said that you don’t like food to be wasted and packed them home.
Yeah I agree that each restaurant has their own recipes and signature dishes. We enjoyed the leftovers we packed for our lunch the next day!
The food looks so delicious! My family is a huge dumpling fans so we would for sure love this place. And you are not the only one who ends up ordering too much food, we somehow do that all the time too. When there is place with great food, it’s hard to resist and Baozi Inn seems to be one of those places.
Yes I am so tempted by the menu that it’s hard to narrow down to a sensible sized order!
Super. It’s excellent that it is just a few minutes from Borough Market. The pink wrapper of Xiao Long Bao made me think it had beetroot in it. Mapo Beancurd sounds like my kinda flavour, being fiery n all! Will check it out next weekend after shopping.
I didn’t think to ask what they used to colour it but maybe it was beetroot? It couldn’t taste it in the flavour though!
I love a restaurant that serves good dumplings. They are so hard to find, most of the ones in Chinatown are pretty mediocre. I would have troubles deciding on a particular dumpling filling, so I’m glad to hear that the traditional dumplings come as a selection of different flavours. I like that they come with chili oil as well, that is such a great topping for dumplings. I would also be tempted by the dan dan noodles, I sometimes make them at home and love their spicy but aromatic taste.
Yeah the mixed Jiaozi were great, means I didn’t have to choose just one type! We have also made dan dan noodles at home and it was nice to see how they compared with the ones at Baozi Inn!
Thanks for the recommendation. Whenever I visit London – it ends up more as a foodie trip since I am missing great international food in Austria. Baozi Inn is serving my favourites it seems – will be adding it on to my ever growing list. I have similar issues when ordering on an empty stomach! but I am actually glad you did : so you can write about more dishes!
We have moved out of London a few years ago, having lived there for 25 years, and there’s not much access to regional Chinese cuisine where we live now, so like you we tend to make trips into London very food-oriented these days!
I enjoy trying out new cuisines since I’m a foodie and this Northern Chinese meals looks delicious! I’ve already had dim sum and dumplings, I can’t wait to taste the chicken skewers with caramelized sauce and the dan dan noodles because they both look absolutely mouthwatering!
Everything was great, I think if you’re a fan of dumplings and chinese regional food you will really like Baozi Inn!
The pics that you have clicked are making me crave for Chinese food. The skewers in particular seem quite appealing. And I am all for dumplings any time. I can see why you might have ended up with more food than planned. It has happened to me tok when I think I can manage it all but when you actually start eating.. You realize you might not finish it. Glad though that you took it back with you to enjoy it the next day. That must have prolonged the delicious fare.