Saucy Bao

My office brings in two popup local businesses 3 days a week to do a lunch catered offering.  Many of these business have food trucks, or stalls at regular food festivals, although occasionally some have regular brick and mortar businesses too.  Most are relatively small and unknown; I don't think I've recognized the names of more than 1-2 over the years (ok, they brought Katz once, and that was epic).

It is a fun way to get some variety, and support local businesses, but generally the food isn't actually that good (Katz was the exception).  It often just isn't very fresh, which I think is the real problem, and they are working with hot boxes to keep things warm that they aren't familiar with, so it just doesn't bode all that well for anything served warm.  They never actually cook or prepare anything on-site as they do soo many covers in an exceptionally short period of time, so it isn't like a regular food festival where they do often do some prep there.  This is basically just serve, serve, serve, rapid fire.  They often sell out within 30 minutes, rarely lasting a full hour.  I've stopped trying most of them, but Saucy Bao caught my eye.

I swung by on the first day of the three day service, and the line, right at the 11:30am opening was crazypants long.  I gave up, and opted to arrive early the next day.  I was second in line at 11:10am.

Mock Storefront.

They decorated the area much like they would at a stall at a popup food festival.

Catering Setup.

The bao were kept in a hot box until serving time, and then brought out on the line in catering pans to serve.  It wasn't particularly effective; the buns were not very warm, many were falling apart.  They clearly just were not freshly made/steamed, which is to be expected, but not even being warm was a real let down.  The staff seemed to notice that they were not warm enough, and tried to turn up the hot box for future customers.

Menu.

The menu featured four kinds of buns: pork, beef, chicken, or vegan, along with three sauces (house sauce, chili oil, spicy mayo).  All had soy, green onion, garlic, sugar, salt, and sesame oil in the filling, along with oyster sauce (or, "vegetarian oyster-style sauce" in the case of the vegan one).  The chicken one also had carrot and corn in it (random), and the beef was supposed to have spinach and cabbage but didn't actually seem to.

We were allowed to pick three buns each, and could mix and match.  I got all but the chicken, as I truly dislike it.

Bao: beef, pork, veggie.

The trio all had the same tasting simple bao casing.  Soft, fresh enough, but basically average and not very noteworthy.  They all tasted the same, despite the beef one having an orange hue, and the veggie one having no pleats.  

Bao: Inside.

All were stuffed reasonably well with filling.

Beef:

This one was just ... odd.  The beef was a really dense, gristly meatball-esque.  The ingredients did not list mushroom, but I'm fairly sure there was mushroom bits in there (either that, or it was some really odd beef).  It was all just heavy, not very flavorful, and not great texture.  The ingredients said the beef one would have spinach, green onion, and cabbage, but I didn't find any of those things in it.  Just the not-so-good meatball.  My least favorite.  1/5.

Veggie:

The surprise hit of my trio.  I got this mostly because I needed a third choice and didn't want to double up on another, but it was actually by far the best.  The filling was very strong on the green onion (honestly, I tasted a lot of garlic, but that wasn't listed as an ingredient?), and had barely any mushroom (I saw two tiny bits, but didn't really taste nor get texture from them at all), but it was flavorful and fresh and juicy.  It went well with the sauces.  The only one I'd consider getting again, although I wouldn't seek it out.  Higher 3/5.

Pork:

The one I expected to like the most, as it is the most common type of bao I encounter and generally enjoy. But this I didn't care for at all.  It had the common unnaturally red bbq pork-esq filling, but the pork was incredibly fatty, and the flavor wasn't particularly compelling either.  The red color/sauce made me think bbq pork buns, but the flavor was very muted.  I tried a few bites hoping I got a bad first few bits of pork, but, no, this just wasn't very good.  1/5.

Chili Oil & House Special Sweet Garlic Sauce.

The business name is "Saucy Bao" after all, so they do have sauces.  These were normally drizzled on top of the buns, but I asked for mine on the side.  We were given a choice of chili oil or house special sweet garlic sauce, but I asked for both.  They also were drizzling on spicy mayo, which seemed odd to me - I adore spicy mayo, don't get me wrong, but it seemed like an odd thing to put on these style buns?

Chili oil:

The chili oil was fairly standard, slightly spicy (presumably sesame) oil.  It went reasonably well with the bao, as you'd expect.  3/5.

House special sweet garlic sauce:

The house special sauce was a complete surprise.  It was shockingly good.  It was indeed sweet and garlic-y, and, well, special.  It was made from a base of soy + oyster + vinegar + sesame oil, plus lots of bits of fresh minced garlic, and sugar.  They seemed to add sugar to everything (all the buns had it in the filling too), but here it worked really well.  The result was a sorta sweet and sour sauce, with a strong aroma, and really classic "Chinese food restaurant" taste.  It went well with the buns, and I suspect would go well with any kind of dumpling, steamed veggies, etc.  I really liked this.  4/5.