Erchen Chang

Erchen Chang’s BAO Isn’t Just About Buns

By Bonnie Langedijk

Restaurants are no longer just for eating. While food has always been the ultimate conduit for connection and dialogue, many restaurants are expanding their universes far beyond a great plate of food. From collaborating with fashion, design and art businesses to creating merch of their own, restaurants are capitalizing on those who feel connected to their overall philosophy and point of view on culture. Creating a world for customers to explore after enjoying that meal they can’t stop thinking about. 

One of the restaurants that has led the movement is BAO – a beloved group of restaurants in London that Creative Director Erchen Chang co-founded along with her husband, Shing Tat Chung, and his sister, Wai Ting Chung, in 2013. The trio popularized bao in the capital, and the restaurant quickly gained recognition from the London food scene. The eatery is one of the most loved restaurants in the capital, and has remained a favorite for years. 

But it’s not just the food that has made BAO a London staple. Through her background in fine arts, Creative Director, co-founder and chef Erchen Chang has developed BAO into much more than just another restaurant. She’s created a brand that leans into numerous creative disciplines, continuously finding new ways to broaden the world of BAO. From BAO’s Lonely Man logo t-shirts and tote bags – worn by London locals and foodies in New York to creating karaoke rooms where you can eat and sing. 

Today, BAO has six locations across London, the restaurant has worked with renowned brands including Dover Street Market, Frieze, Phaidon and Simone Rocha and even has its own app where BAO fans can dive into the BAOverse, spend BAOcoins and discover tiered perks & benefits. We called up Chang to hear more.

Let's get nerdy about the art of making bao. I’ve read that the dough can be tricky. 

Erchen: We created our own dough. When we were developing our bao recipe, we looked through many different traditional recipes. We landed on this specific type of starter called Tangzhong to make our bao dough. It’s usually used in very soft bread like Shokupan, a Japanese soft loaf of bread. It’s quite a wet dough that is quite tricky to work with and we prove it twice. Actually there's a little side story when we were back in Taiwan that might give some context.

Let’s hear the side story.

Erchen: When we did a pop-up in Taiwan last October, the company that invited us told us they could get us a bao master to make our baos. All we had to do was give them our recipe. Suddenly towards the end, we were tasting the end product and it just didn’t taste as good. It turned out the BAO master had been lying and was in fact doing his own recipe. He then refused to do ours as it was too lengthy which then sent us on a wild goose chase in the 25th hour to find someone who could do it. And the response from everyone including bakers were that they would only do traditional, classic dough and they wouldn’t touch our recipe. Suddenly you feel like you don't belong anywhere. We're not in the Western patisserie realm, we're not in the Chinese dough realm. We're in our own world. But in a way, our recipe ended up defining who we are. We’ve always cherished innovations in order to create our own world, the BAO world. The process we have is still extremely authentic and nods to all the great classics before us. The thought of bringing something that was originally from Taiwan, back there, is a scary thought. But when everyone tried it, they tasted the difference. That validated that we had created a dough that's difficult to work with, but it tastes great, smells great and looks good. 

“Suddenly you feel like you don't BELONG anywhere. We're not in the Western patisserie realm, we're not in the Chinese dough realm. ”

That must have felt like a personal victory. 

Erchen: Going back to the dough. We always work on different forms, but usually this dough loves going sideways and going flat. Whenever we want to create something new, we need to think about how we want to create it so it can form in the right way. The temperature of steaming isn’t like baking bread. There isn’t much in the temperature margin you can play with. It's very much in the margin of 20 degrees, between 80 degrees to a hundred degrees. We go through a lot of tests, and we allow whatever failure comes our way, because sometimes it’s the failures that bring us to a new place. But it also can be frustrating. I dream about having a massive steamer one day. Then we can make things on a different scale. That would be a dream come true.

To make a mega bao! Food is inextricably linked to nostalgia and culture. Do you remember the first meal that really left an impression on you?

Erchen: Before going to school, I would go to this very small stall in front of where we waited for the school bus owned by an old lady. She sold Da Chang Mian Xian vermicelli noodles in a bonito based broth. Famously, this dish is more known for serving with oysters, but here they served it with humble soy braised intestines. It doesn't sound good I know, but the texture of the beautifully braised offal swimming in strands of soft noodles in bonito broth is truly delicious. I always asked for extra minced garlic and fermented red chilli to add on. With the savoury spicy combinations, It's a dish that would just wake me up. I remember the tingly feeling on my lips, the sweat on my forehead. It’s a very physical memory. It’s not just about the dish, it’s the senses, smells and memories that comes with the dish. 

Do you ever try to recreate the feeling that dish gave you?

Erchen: That's one way of creating an experience. It's built around one piece of time or capsule in my brain. BAO is inspired by our travels. For me it's back home, for my partners it's the Taiwan where they hadn’t been much before they met me. We also go to Japan a lot. It's often the very small things that inspire us. When we went to Golden Gai in Shinjuku, which is a very small street food alley, the guy cooking the yakitori was working in such a small, constrained space. But it’s made perfectly for him because he has worked there day in, day out for years. That smooth rhythm is something that we're always trying to capture when we're travelling and it’s something we bring back to the restaurant. It's all these small dining experience details we can slide into the space or into our design. 

The food has been key to the success of the restaurant. But I think the brand around BAO has really set it apart from anything else in London too. How did you develop the universe of BAO beyond food?

Erchen: Initially we spend so much time developing, growing, and working on every single dish. But we also wanted to make sure that whatever space you're sitting in echoes the culture that we’re interested in. In the early years, we didn't know how to explain that but now we're very inspired by the Taiwanese way of life. It's not just cuisine itself, it's also how do people experience this type of food? In what type of space? That becomes the whole package. Before we started BAO, my final degree show piece at Slade [London's School of Fine Art] was called "Rules to Be a Lonely Man". It's a performative installation art work, and it was where our logo came from. We always joked about BAO being this place where The Lonely Man would go. How this dish would be the perfect size for The Lonely Man and how he could watch the tea ceremony happening inside the bar from the single dining chair facing the bar. The Lonely Man is our grounding narrative that runs through all the restaurants. It has helped us to create the restaurant, because we always have that center to go back to.

The business has grown exponentially. How have you been able to hold on to one identity while still exploring different ways of showcasing it?

Erchen: Even though the center star has always been the bao, there's different things that accompany it that makes it that every time you go to a different location, you get a different feeling. That's what always fuels us to want to create. I hope that whoever enters our world has this sense of, especially for people who don't know us, this is more than just a restaurant. Once they read a bit more about us, they can start to peel back the layers. 

It's like an onion.

Erchen: Yes!

More and more creative disciplines – whether that's fashion or art or design – are looking to food to translate their creative vision or add it as another creative means to tell their story. The pop-up you did at Dover Street Market, is a great example of that. 

Erchen: We're at the peak of food and art and all these creative minds colliding. It's amazing that food is seen in this light again. I think food is the most fundamental way of exchanging culture. It's how you exchange where you come from and what sort of culture you've lived through or want to convey. 

It’s the perfect pathway to deeper connection too. And while all these creative disciplines are separated, technically the worlds all interject with each other, don't they?

Erchen: For sure. To study fine arts and go into the food industry, I appreciate the fluidity of different types of creativity coming together. The principles can be shared, it's just how you convey or what you use as your material is different.

That's such a good way of describing it. It must be fun when you get to collaborate with brands and people outside of the food world.

Erchen: We've been doing the collaboration with Carhartt for the past six years now. Then there are others here and there that we might be able to collaborate with. When we did the cookbook for Phaidon, they also hosted their Christmas party with us, and then we did these large bao sculptures for them too. There's that side to collaboration. Then there's the merchandise side, where we actually create something together to sell.

It’s definitely become a brand beyond food. What’s your take on social media and the impact it's had on the restaurant scene, but also certain food? At one point everyone was doing braided bread and then everyone's doing a vintage egg dish or anchovies in olive oil.

Erchen: The focaccia! When we started, people got to know us through social media. I think at the time it was more Twitter, less Instagram. We would just post on Twitter and say: Hey, we're going to be at this market on Wednesday and then people would just turn up. It's a low cost way to be seen by lots of people. Whatever I do in London, people can see it in Taipei, Seoul, America, et cetera. But social media is becoming more demanding. You feel like you have to keep creating. As to trends, I use them as a guide to NOT do it. You should do something that you're interested in and passionate about and not be swayed by what everyone else is doing. 

I couldn’t agree more. You have a very clear vision of what BAO is today. Has your philosophy of food and what food means to you changed as the business has grown?

Erchen: It definitely has changed. Initially we started off doing only three items. At that time, and I feel like it reflects age as well at the time, we wanted to make every single dish perfect. It had to be super tasty, it needed to look really cute, perfect, fluffy. We were very concentrated on each individual dish initially, and it worked well. Over the years, we learned that you want the menu to have peaks and valleys. You want to have your high notes, your low notes, your supporting acts. In terms of how we create food, we've also gone through the journey of how to create that. 

In what way?

There are three things we always go back to. One is heritage, meaning what connection it has to Taiwan or the way of life in Taiwan. Two is produce. It can be this amazing aged soy sauce that we bring over from Taiwan that just transforms the dish. The last is innovation. Whenever I think of innovation, it’s about that small twist that makes you feel like you've entered the BAO world and that every single element of the dish has been considered. 

Do you have a favorite BAO dish? It's like choosing your children I can imagine.

Erchen: It sounds cheesy, but it's the first dish, which is our classic bao. It's the one dish I can go back to over and over again. Every single element is done right. It brings comfort and I appreciate all the work that goes into a very small bao. From the bakery team to fermenting the veg, to braising the pork overnight and everything that comes together. Knowing all the craft and mastery that has gone into this dish makes me appreciate it even more.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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