551 Horai

551 Horai is a popular place for butaman, which is a steamed bun filled with pork.  We went to the location in Namba.  There’s a lot of other shops and places to eat in the area, as you can see from the picture.

551 Horai in Namba

I’m really impressed with how the Japanese display their food. Everything there looks so neat and tidy (including clothing). They have an actual restaurant upstairs too if you want to dine in. They serve a variety of dishes (other than buns).

Butaman display

Other dishes at their restaurant

Each bun costs ¥170 and if you get it for take out, they give you a small packet of mustard to go with your bun, which provides another pop of flavour.  The bun just by itself is already really good though.  It was firm and not soggy at all.  The pork filling was savoury and it was an adequate amount.  The meat to bun ratio was perfect.  Sorry, I guess I got too caught up in eating the bun that I didn’t take a picture of the inside!  It was really tasty and the best steamed bun that I’ve had! 🙂

Nice packaging!

Butaman

They also sell these at KIX airport — in fact, we bought these again there on our way home!  Too bad we’re not allowed to bring meat items into Canada.  Otherwise, we would’ve bought more for friends and family to try back home.  Anyways, if you’re in the area I would highly recommend grabbing a bun or two to share (or not share) 😉

Address:
〒542-0076 3-6-3 Namba Chuo-ku Osaka

Bao Down Gastropub + Raw Bar

DC and I had dinner tonight at the recently opened Bao Down in Olympic Village. I was looking forward to trying their baos which are like steamed bun sandwiches but found out through Yelp that they’re only served during lunch hours. Too bad 😦

Bao Down Olympic Village

We arrived around 7pm and the restaurant was pretty full. We didn’t have to wait too long to get a table for two though.

Cool wallpaper

The mood inside the restaurant was very energetic and the ambience had a hipster feel. I especially liked their wallpaper. We were surprised at how pricy the items on the menu were. Most of the dishes were at least $15, with a lot of them even going over $20. I thought the drinks were way too pricy too, especially the cocktails ($12-$15). The service wasn’t great either. We had to ask twice to get a glass of water and we waited over 30 minutes for our first dish to come out. We wanted to order some fresh oysters too but their special ones for $1 were sold out. You need to order a minimum of 6 so we passed since the other oysters were around $2-3 each.

Fly Rice ($17)

We ordered 2 dishes to share. The first was Fly Rice, which was basically fried rice with pork, slaw, crispy garlic, water chestnuts, and a fried egg. The egg was nicely cooked the pork was pretty good and flavourful. The water chestnuts were a nice addition too. However, the dish as a whole was subpar. Firstly, the dish was not hot at all when it came out — it wasn’t even warm… Secondly, bits of the rice were hard, not crispy. Not a very big portion either. The rice was probably less than a bowl.

King Fish ($23.10)

Our second dish, the King Fish, was a fail. We waited about an hour for this to come out and we had already finished our previous dish. Even worse, when I cut into the fish to split it between the two of us, I noticed that the inside was a pale, grey colour… It was raw. 😦 You could see that it was still bleeding red at the top too. We showed our server and she apologized and sent it back to the kitchen, saying that she’ll bring out a new one for us.

By that time, we were already very unimpressed and wanted to just cancel that order and leave since we thought it would probably take another hour for them to cook up a new one. However, another lady, who was the manager/supervisor(?) came to our table and apologized and explained what happened. Apparently the fish they had prepped for had been sold out already but there was a miscommunication between the kitchen and the servers so they didn’t know. We shouldn’t have been allowed to order it but since we had already done so, the chefs had to cut a piece from a new batch and it was too thick. She then offered to give us another dish on the house. We agreed and took another look at the menu. She was very helpful and friendly, which helped ease our frustration.

Fish.. grilled again

As soon as we decided on what to order, the previous server brought back the fish that had been re-fired. They said we could still have it if we like, so we did just to try it. It wasn’t good though. It was the same dish we had sent back and they just grilled the fish again. They didn’t even change the papaya salad or the plate… 😦 By that time, the fish was already dry and didn’t really have much flavour left to it. We didn’t like the papaya salad either. It tasted weird because the acidic and spicy flavours didn’t mesh together very well, unlike other papaya salads I’ve had.

Jumbo Black Tiger Prawns ($20)

Anyways, moving on… The additional dish we decided to get was the Jumbo Black Tiger Prawns. This was much better. We had it with garlic fried rice but the rice still wasn’t hot. At least the prawns were hot and freshly cooked. They were seasoned generously, giving it good flavour and they weren’t overcooked, thankfully.

All in all, quite the disappointing experience here at Bao Down, given that we dined for around 2 hours waiting for our food, only to find out that it was not cooked properly. However, I am glad that they took steps to resolve our problems by taking care of our 2 dishes. We only had to pay for our first dish, the fried rice. They definitely have a lot to work on in terms of quality of food and timeliness of service, especially for their prices. Maybe their baos are better — I’ll have to go during lunch next time. But until then, here are my ratings:

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Food – 3.5/10

Service – 3.5/10

Value – 3/10

Ambience – 8/10

New Town Bakery & Restaurant ft. munkie coco

Hello everyone! I have a special treat for you… munkie coco will be writing a review for today’s post :D.

– hungry coco

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Hi guys! Munkie coco blogging here. Hungry coco has graciously offered me a chance to write a post on her snazzy new food blog. Every time I’m here, my mouth waters and it makes me want to taste and sample all these goodies she snaps a photo of.

Anyway, on to my review. Today we went to New Town Bakery & Restaurant for some siopao. New Town has 3 locations — Surrey, Richmond, and Vancouver. We went to the Surrey location as we were already in the area. New Town is popular for their siopao or “steamed buns.” First up, I must say that parking is really challenging. There’s only about 12 spots or so, and the spots were quite tight. It didn’t help that New Town’s own van took up one of the spots…..If you’re going here, it’s probably best to take the SkyTrain. It’s right across from the station and you don’t have to worry about parking.

We picked up some siopao, and dad got some puto as well. As we were paying, the cashier asked us if we wanted a plastic bag to carry the 4 boxes that we had purchased. My mom said yes. When we left the store, we noticed on our receipt that we were charged for the plastic bags. I have no problem with merchants charging for plastic bags, but I think they should let the customer know that there will be a charge for the plastic bags.

New Town Bakery posted menu

New Town Bakery goodies

While we were there, this little beauty caught my eye, and I couldn’t resist. I had to take one home with me. 🙂 Palitaw is a sweet, sticky rice cake with coconut flakes around it. Inside, there’s ground peanuts and sugar. They also make palitaw with red bean inside, but I got the peanut one. At $1.20 apiece, it was a good size and it felt heavy in my hand. I couldn’t wait and ate it in the van on our way home. 🙂 Biting into it, it was sticky and soft, with just the right amount of sweetness. After the second bite, I got into the core of the palitaw. I ate it up too fast that I forgot to take a photo of the inside. 🙂 But it was just the right amount of peanut and sugar inside. Even hungry coco who normally doesn’t like anything coconut-y enjoyed it! I would definitely go back and get this tasty sweet treat again.

Palitaw

When we got home, we had the steamed buns for dinner. I got the chicken deluxe. The filling includes chicken, a small piece of egg, and pork.

Steamed bun or siopao

Inside the siopao

The siopao was tasty and filling. The dough was soft; the filling inside was very flavourful. This is good to eat for a snack or if you want something light for dinner. It’s also easy to take with you for lunch. Just wrap it in a moist paper towel, throw it in the microwave for a minute, and you’re good to go! But for best results, it’s best to eat it steamed.

For dessert, we all had a piece of puto, which is a kind of steamed rice cake. Forgot to take a photo of this one again, but it was good, just the right amount of sweetness, and a little sticky. Personally, it’s not my favourite dessert, but everybody else liked it, and I did think it was good. Just that I would pick palitaw over puto any day. 🙂

Food – 8.5/10

Would I come back? Definitely yes!