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New York City-based pastry chef Dominique Ansel partnered with chef Eric Sze of 866, a Taiwanese restaurant in New York, to offer a limited-time special in celebration of Lunar New Year: A French-style shao bing pork belly sandwich. The sandwich starts with a French take on the traditional shao bing, a layered and crispy sesame-seed flatbread, which Ansel treats more like a croissant, using Beurre d'Isigny butter and Grands Moulins de Paris flour from France, giving it a beautifully flaky texture. It is then filled with braised Taiwanese pork belly, cilantro, pickled mustard greens and peanut sugar. It is served with a house-made peanut rice milk latte.
Forsyth Fire Escape started as a pop-up in New York City in 2021. Since then, founders Isabel Lee and Luis Fernandez have developed an impressive following for their scallion pancake burritos, which they originally sold by lowering them from a bucket off of their Chinatown fire escape. Fast forward to 2023 and Forsyth Fire Escape has a permanent position in the Olly Olly Market in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea. The burritos feature slow roasted pernil pork shoulder, fried queso blanco, guacamole and lemon grass chile crisp oil, merging the couple’s Chinese, Thai, and Dominican roots.
Anthony Keene, the chef of Boxwood, the signature restaurant of the London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills, created a series of six different bao burgers to offer guests something fun and different, and as a departure from the restaurant’s British-inspired menu. Each burger starts with the traditional Chinese steamed bao bun, but then veers in a different direction. One is made with pork belly, hoisin sauce, cucumber, scallion, pickled carrot, and crispy pork cracklings. Another is filled with salt and pepper squid, wasabi Sriracha mayonnaise, pickled beets, and coconut-shallot crunch. Vegetarians can choose from baos stuffed with crispy panko-breaded eggplant with spiced green beans and pickled beets, or sweet potato rösti with scallion, eggplant salsa, and pickled carrot.
Pictured is a burger with fried chicken thigh, sweet & sour sauce, pickled carrot with coriander, and toasted rice.
Pictured is Lion Dance’s shao bing with Singaporean beehoon, or vermicelli noodles, with soy milk yogurt, soy pickled chiles, grilled gai lan, makrut lime leaf mayonnaise, and herbs.
When chef Douglas Kean reopened Cyrus, the much-acclaimed Michelin two-star restaurant in Geyserville, Calif., after ten years, it was with a grand new vision for a progressive 12-course tasting menu, moving through four different rooms starting with canapes, Champagne and caviar in the lounge and finishing with mignardises in front of a chocolate fountain. Along the way, guests enjoy steamed buns with Saikyo miso butter accompanying the main courses.
Cafe Mochiko in Cincinnati has earned national recognition for its French pastries with Asian flavors, including its everything cream cheese bao, which starts with a rich milk-bread dough. Cream cheese is wrapped in this traditional dough, which is left to rise and then topped and baked with the restaurant’s take on everything bagel spice, marrying the classic bagel and a traditional Chinese bao.
