Mao's Bao

Mao's Bao is a food stall located in Chelsea Market.  They also attend food festivals and events around New York with their food truck, and provide catering services.  I've seen them several times, and was always drawn in, but didn't try them until now.

"Mao's Bao redefines the art of dumplings. Dive into the luxury of their JianBao, where each bite delivers a perfect contrast of fluffy softness and crispy crust."

As you may have guessed from their business name, Mao's Bao serves pan fried buns, jian bao.   Reviews are pretty blah - noting that even at the main food stall in Chelsea Market the buns are precooked, which really makes the crispy pan fried nature, well, not that, and noting that the buns have way too thick of wrappers, but I still tried them, when they were at a popup event I attended.

And yep, the reviews seem accurate.  It wasn't *bad* exactly, but certainly not good.  New York has plenty of great dumplings/buns, no reason to settle for such mediocrity. 

Menu.

The bao are available in some basic flavors: beef, pork, chicken, lamb, or vegetarian mushroom.  Each variety is a different color.  You get 6 for $15, or $2.40-$3 each depending on the variety. 

Bao.

 They look pretty, with the variety of colors.  The purple ones were particularly striking.

2x Beef Jian Bao, 2x Veggie Jian Bao, Noodles.

I tried two flavors, beef and veggie.  They came over noodles and mixed greens.

The noodles were very greasy.  Some minor vegetables included (a few mushrooms mostly).  I did not care for the noodles. 1/5.

The buns did have a crispy side, or at least, a side that was pan fried and crispy at some point, but they were now pretty soft.  The wrappers were really quite thick, and didn't taste like much of anything (I'll admit that the colors made my brain expect more significant flavor, I suspect if they were just traditional white bao, I may have been less grumpy that they had no taste).  I didn't find them very enjoyable either, and they too were fairly greasy. Really low 2/5 or maybe 1/5 wrappers.

Beef Jian Bao: Inside.

As for the fillings, the beef was a very spongy meatball.  It sorta reminded me of a slightly bigger meatball like those found in canned Chef Boyardee or SpaghettiOs.  It didn't have a particularly good flavor.  2/5.

The mushroom filling was much better, just minced mushrooms, but they were flavorful and enjoyable enough. Low 3/5.

Put this all together, and it is ... yeah, basically ... 1.5/5.  Just really not good.