After the resounding success of Baozilnn Soho, followed by its packed out second site at Market Halls Victoria, Baozilnn Group’s latest venue, a flagship three-floor restaurant and bar in the heart of London Bridge, is now open on Southwark Street. A stone’s throw from Borough Market, the exciting new space has a glass front, perfect for people watching and cosy nooks upstairs with old Chinese movie posters and traditional Chinese paintings on the walls.
The menu is extensive – more like a small book – complete with photos for those less well acquainted with this colourful Cantonese and Northern Chinese street food.
With everything designed to be shared, we kicked off with salt and pepper prawns which had a gorgeous crispy coating before tucking into their legendary soup dumplings. Arriving under their basket cloche, we tried one purple (beef) and green (pork), each swimming in broth. For us though, the best dumplings were the wonton in XO Sauce. SO good, you can choose from either pork or prawn stuffing and you get a generous 8 pieces in each portion.
The key difference with this London Bridge menu though is the focus on Cantonese roast meats. This includes the excellent quality roast duck, crispy roast pork, barbeque pork and soya chicken. All four come with chef’s special sauce, pancakes, multi-coloured Sichuanese pickles and honeydew melon. If pancakes don’t float your boat (seriously, who are these people??) they can be ordered with rice, braised pak choi and a free-range egg or with dry or soup noodles. We’d recommend trying both ways as the egg noodles are flown in weekly from a small producer in Hong Kong – and as you can imagine, are pretty special. A side of fat asparagus spears under a sprinkling of crispy garlic was our only nod to veggies.
With no desserts on offer and the cocktails not on, we finished our wine and headed back out stuffed and happy but on the hunt for something sweet.
Baozilnn fans will no doubt love the latest opening.
