I’ve been eating at Bun House for almost a decade, ever since it first opened on Soho’s Greek Street back in 2017, popping in for pre-drink dinners and (back when it stayed open that late) post-drink bus snacks. It’s moved since then, spawned a tea house spin-off which has since shut, and last year they opened a second branch in Shoreditch with an inexplicable disco theme.
The menu’s changed a little over the years — with some welcome new additions, and old favourites lost along the way — but its heart remains the same: perfectly plump, rounded bao with all manner of fillings.
These are Cantonese-inspired bao, rather than Taiwanese, sealed spheres instead of the fluffy discs you find at the likes of Bao. Bun House’s signature touch of flair is a bright red stamp on each shining surface, a traditional Chinese character to mark the filling you’ll find inside the quivering, pillowy balls of dough. Those characters are repeated on the menu, the tables, and the cleverly constructed takeaway containers, so you shouldn’t have any real excuse for eating the wrong one, no matter how bad your Cantonese.
These days the menu offers five savoury buns and one sweet. The savouries are described simply: beef, pork, chicken, lamb, or vegetables, but there’s more variation than it might sound from that alone. The pork, for example, is actually their take on a char siu, sweet and almost jammy, minuscule pieces of meat and fat melding into a glorious whole; the lamb draws instead on northern Chinese flavours, richly scented with cumin, spiced but not spicy.
The rogue sweet option is a signature custard bun, filled with yolk-yellow lava and ready to erupt at first bite. Delicious as it is, this is a couple of steps removed from the custard bao you might find on a dim sum trolley. The sugar’s been amped up, for one — this wouldn’t get the “not too sweet” nod of approval — with the egginess correspondingly toned down. It’s also a pointedly thin custard, one suspects designed to maximise the TikTok money shot as it bursts dramatically open, which makes it rather unnecessarily messy to eat.
If I sound a little bitter, it’s only because Bun House used to make one of the finest desserts in London, but the cowards discontinued it: a pig’s blood and chocolate bao. No, wait, hear me out! Pitched as an homage to both the restaurant’s Hong Kong origins and London setting, it used the blood as a thickening agent that also lent a savoury depth, bringing out the best of the chocolate’s bitter notes while cutting off its sickly side (not too sweet!!!). Sadly you can’t order it now, and perhaps never will again, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
It’s not buns all the way down, though those are the obvious highlights. Bun House has expanded to offer a small array of dim sum dumplings and wontons too. Har gao arrive wrapped a little too thick, their coating gummy rather than silken, though the prawn inside hits the spot. There’s also a range of street food-inspired snacks and sharing plates, from satay beef to mala waffle fries. Order these for variety’s sake, but don’t get your hopes up too high.
Truth be told, I’m not sure you should get your hopes up too high even for the buns at Bun House. There’s nothing revelatory here — at least not since that pig’s blood bao oinked its last — and cutesy red-stamp aesthetic aside, you can eat better elsewhere in Chinatown. But there aren’t many places nearby you can eat better and quicker, or more reliably, or pick up more satisfying parcels to take away with you. Bun House isn’t a restaurant I’d ever travel across town for, but it’s my first thought whenever I have tickets for theatre in the West End, or a double bill at the Prince Charles Cinema across the street. It’s a trusty faithful, a stalwart spot where I know I can be in and out in 15 minutes, a belly full of char siu and custard dribbling down my chin.